


The Pilot

by Jessa



Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canonverse AU, Death of a major character (chapter one), Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Finnlo journey from enemies to friends, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Poe, Force-ghost Han Solo, Gen, Gray Jedi, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Jedi texts, Marriage proposal (reylo), Maz mentors Ben Solo, NSFW, Oral Sex, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey and Poe are siblings, Rey/Ben/Smut, Reylo - Freeform, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-03-08 20:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 79,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13465596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessa/pseuds/Jessa
Summary: Smutty Reylo love story, set just after The Last Jedi.As the Rebels attempt to out-maneuver the First Order, Rey’s Force-connections with Ben continue.And now, here was this girl – Rey – who didn’t care about any of it. Delineations. Orders. Protocols. Ancestries. Wasn’t raised to care. Was just raised to survive. And gain truth. To navigate her way, learn things for herself, and choose for herself. The pilot of her own destiny.





	1. Outer Rim

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this and notice a tag is needed please don’t hesitate to tell me.
> 
> Also this is like literally the first fic I wrote in twenty years and I screwed some things up. The smut is super cringy and I used the word ‘sex’ to describe female genitalia. Ruh-roh. I am slowly finding and fixing that sad situation but if you find one I missed please let me know. I’m just frankly embarrassed about it and wanna fix it up but I’m not gonna delete the fic over it (which I know I have a tendency to do, but I promise I’m not.) 
> 
> Thanks for reading this fic, I hope you like it xx

1\. Past. Outer Rim.

Their decoy appeared at first to have worked. The First Order fleet had seemingly followed only Chewie on the Falcon, away from Crait’s small moon and from where Rey, Leia and the surviving Resistance fighters had made a last-minute switch during a swift but calculated diversion to one of two waiting evacuation transports.

Kylo Ren’s most recent demonstration of unhinged brute strength had made it clear to Poe Dameron that the guy would hands down take the right bait if offered it, and bring every available resource he had along with him. The wheels were falling off. Ben had thought he was following Rey.

But after the switch, it was Rey who had attempted to evacuate Leia on the first transport, successfully navigating the initial part of their escape from the Outer Rim. Still feeling the shock of Luke’s sudden departure from the Force, Leia’s heart had given out, and she had not survived. General Organa was gone.

And at that moment, Rey and Ben had sensed it together; a silencing in the Force. And that connection had betrayed Rey’s true position to Kylo Ren but also, somehow, to Poe.

To the rest of the Rebels, it appeared as though Rey’s transport had met a fleet ship on its way out of the star system, that had for some reason broken off from the manifestation of Ben’s general and total mental collapse: imminent and blazing annihilation by the First Order of the Falcon.

Wanting to turn back – knowing Rey was now alone – but with too many lives to protect at the expense of one, Poe had chosen to lead the last of the Resistance away to safety in the second transport, as the First Order fleet followed the ship carrying their Supreme Leader. To Rey.

 

2\. Present. Outer Rim / Jakku.

The intensity of it causes Rey to almost close her eyes, but she knows that this will achieve nothing useful so she doesn’t.

Instead, Rey looks straight at it; twelve First Order fleet ships are tailing her and Leia is gone. Rey is alone in the transport. It isn’t the Falcon, but it will do.

 _Think_.

Rey shoves the throttle and the ship accelerates, straight toward the fleet.

 _Feel_.

As Kylo Ren gives the order to fire, Rey throws herself over the aileron stick and smacks the hyperdrive, launching the ship over the fleet to light speed and through the star system, clearing the Outer Rim.

The First Order fires at empty space and Ben looks for something to break. He can’t see Rey – she is blocking him – but he can sense her. Can sense her instinct to return to what she knows but wishes she could shed. Jakku.

And although she is blocking him, Rey can still sense Ben’s rage but her resolve doesn’t waver. She holds out until the very last moment, to ensure the lowest entry point possible, and then punches the button again to reappear, just centimeters above the Sinking Fields, and a half a mile out from the first wrecked starship, which marks the beginning of the Graveyard of Giants.

The transport skips like a stone. Rey jumps the pedal and jerks the control wheel hard left to spin the transport twice before it finally stops. She braces herself against the display, jamming the control wheel and crumpling her right side in the process. Winded, she regains her foothold and scrambles for the exit.

 _Weapon_.

Almost as an afterthought, Rey grabs the blaster formerly belonging to Leia with one hand, as the other one hits the lever on the exit so hard that the wind is knocked from her body for a second time.

And as the transport starts to creak and groan, Rey runs across the sand and into the cavernous remains of the abandoned starship’s recesses, labyrinthine and full of debris, which she keeps stumbling over in her desperate scramble for a place to hide, as the last of the transport sinks beneath the scorching surface.

The landing gear of the downed starship makes a long, narrowing annex with the dune. After giving the command to wait for his signal before leaving the docked fleet ship, Kylo Ren approaches its entrance. Although her fresh footprints are clearly visible in the sand before his heavy feet, he doesn’t need a visual guide; Ben can sense Rey. He already knows exactly where she is.

And having reached the end of the annex only moments ago, Rey already knows she is trapped. As she hears the hum of Ben’s weapon, and his powerful footfalls levelling the sand over which she’s just scampered, she readies her blaster in preparation as the physical gap between them continues to close.

And as Ben’s enormous black frame comes into view, limited by the low light filtered through the upper parts of the ship and the intense light of day entering the annex from its mouth, Rey fires off a series of tokenistic shots toward him.

Ben, backlit against the entrance to the annex, blocks each one deftly, as though focused on something else. And he is. They both are.

Rey can feel how close Ben is now. Can hear his breath and the soles of his boots as they continue their steady approach. She fires again, reminded of when they’d first met on Takodana.

As Ben deflects absentmindedly, Rey knows that she is letting him read her mind. Knows that as soon as she thinks, he knows, and so this charade is futile and hers are indeed very feeble attempts to defend from his advance.

Rey is stalling. Are they both stalling? She knows Ben will continue to deflect and move forward, closer. This whole thing she’s doing with the blaster is actually pretty fucking useless.

 _Surrender_.

“Ben, please.”

Ben senses before he knows that no more shots will follow. Reminded of the forest – where he’d also fended off blasts from Rey that had almost seemed half-hearted in the end – he knows that she will now throw down her borrowed weapon. Will piff it in the junk-filled sands that have blown down the annex and accumulated over decades, in the niche where she now stands. Helpless and waiting for him.

Rey drops the blaster and waits for Ben. But the metallic glint in the sand before her feet is nothing compared to what else she has also willingly relinquished. Rey has dropped her use of the Force, too. This is an appeal. He can feel it: nothing at all from her now in terms of her use of the Force.

And Rey and Ben stand there at the end of the annex, in the near darkness save for the scarlet glow of his lightsaber, mere feet from each other. Ben says nothing to Rey. He breathes in. He breathes out. Extinguishing the saber, he looks once more at the girl who has fought, defeated and refused him. Her face, half in shadow, illuminated now by only a single shaft of light, entering from above them in the annex.

And Ben advances again. He can do anything he wants to her now.

 

3\. Present. Jakku System / Jakku.

“The order was to wait, sir.”

“The time for inaction has long passed,” retorts General Hux.

“The First Order will not continue to play childish games with a girl. Find him. Destroy her.”

Kylo Ren cocks his left ear, slowly turning his face so that the stormtroopers and the mouth of the annex are now in view over his powerful shoulder.

And as they enter the annex, before their visions turn black, there is no time for any member of the twenty-strong division to even comprehend a change in air temperature. 

 

4\. Present. Jakku.

Suddenly Ben stops on the sand. Unsure of why. Is he waiting for something? But waiting for what? Retaliation? How far can he go before she will realize that he will _not_ relent on this? That he will _not_ be the one to step back? That Kylo Ren _is_ strong. That Kylo Ren _is_ powerful. That Kylo Ren is _not_ weak, like his grandfather. Or his uncle. Or his father, who she had so idolized. It _still_ makes Ben so angry to think that Rey saw something different in Han Solo than he had, his own son.

As Ben continues to watch her, blaster deliberately discarded before her feet – purposefully and foolishly defenseless – Ben thinks back to something then. To her on Starkiller Base. As he’d laid her out carefully before him.

Ben had reached for Rey there. Palm open and expectant, entitled, as he’d extended his gloved hand toward her. Deserving of what she had. Deserving of what she was. A thing. To be taken.

But Rey had leaned forward to meet Ben, then. Had not cowered from him, at the end of it. Had offered herself to him as not a thing to be controlled or dominated but had instead leaned forward as an equal. His equal. With an equal amount of Force.

Rey had presented herself to him then as a thing to be earned, not taken. Is she still?

Rey watches Ben as once again – very slowly – he reaches for her. His eyes on her but not really seeing her. Seeing something else. He sneers, but not at her. Clenches his jaw, gloved hand in a tremor, only millimeters now from her skull.

And with no idea what he’s thinking, Rey continues to just stand there, waiting. Because she doesn’t fear Ben any longer. And as she looks at him now – struggling with himself, to regain himself, his sense of control, conviction, confidence – she almost feels sad.

Rey looks at Ben now and sees loss. Of self. Of purpose.

Ben makes a fist.

“For  _fuck’s_  sake!” he yells toward Rey, but not at her.

And then Ben drops his arm to his side, drops his saber, and turns to face the light at the end of the annex.

Rey breathes a quiet sigh of relief and continues to observe Ben. Inspecting the expanse of his black-clad back and the way his tumble of hair is indistinguishable from the crest of his powerful shoulders, in silhouette as he is. Backlit against the mouth of the annex, and under the ruined ship.

Rey notices the way Ben holds his shoulders now. A thing she’s noticed before if she really considers it, and something that strikes her as strange and unexplained. Their slope, caused by the slight curvature of his spine. As though the weight of his mind is too much for even a frame of his size to support. And this weight is growing. He is withdrawing, waning like a moon. As though he is crushing himself. An apparent physical impossibility.

_Ben?_

He has waited for this. Has known Rey would use the Force again at some point. Has also known that she’d use it at a time when he was most vulnerable. Defeated by himself again, as in the snow. As on the Supremacy. Where he’d had next to nothing physically left to give. And nothing left to offer her but a vague promise of power.

 _Please_.

But Ben has not expected Rey to use the Force again like this, in anything but defense. Or attack. Because has that not become the pattern between them? In his anger, Ben loses patience and attempts to Force her. And Rey, in her righteousness, fights his authority. Fights his pathetic attempts to control himself. To master her. To make her do what he wants.

And as Rey watches Ben drop to his knees now, as she knows the entirety of the collapse unfolding before her, she comes to know these thoughts of his, too.

Slowly, still sensing cautiously with the Force – pushing out with it in case of a sudden counter-attack – Rey closes now the physical gap between her and Ben with careful footsteps across the sand until she stands adjacent to his crouched form. She bends her knees and drops them, landing with a soft quake on the cool floor of the annex.

“Ben?”

The sound of her voice seems to break his internal haze. Rey watches Ben’s face. Watches him blink as though waking from a torpor, knitting his dark brows together and searching for a focus in the present.

“Ben?” she calls softly again.

Until finally Ben finds it. Rey.

“Drop it,” he orders.

“Drop what?”

“You know what. You don’t need it now.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

“ _No_.”

“Why?” he spits. “Why not? You  _still_  don’t trust me. Say it.”

“I don’t,” she replies. “Not really.”

Crouched together in the sand, Rey and Ben continue to side-eye each other. She can feel his use of the Force now to push against her. She has not forgotten the blaster she’d thrown down earlier in their initial stand-off, as he’d been advancing down the annex, saber in hand. He reads her thought and the shadow of a scowl crosses his face as she realizes it.

“Please don’t, Ben. That’s not what this is about.”

“You just want a blaster to cuddle then, huh? Come on.”

“Ben, far out. Seriously.”

“Seriously,  _what_?”

“Seriously, is this really what we’re gonna do all the time now? This stupid, back and forth shit about nothing?”

“About  _nothing_?”

And now Ben turns his face to look Rey square in the eyes, meaning to Force-attack her again but as he looks, and really sees her, he finds he can’t.

Ben’s scowl softens as he looks at Rey longer. His jaw unclenches.

Rey watches as his lips relax. And as Ben’s eyes grow soft. As they search into her own.

Ben has searched her eyes before. In the snow on Starkiller Base, as he’d fought himself from killing her. Knowing Kylo Ren could destroy her as the splitting ground – the edge of it upon which the heels of her boots had tried so desperately to cling, then – was collapsing, and with the slightest shift forward from his powerful body he could tip her over it. To let the crumbling planet take her with it. Away at last. The Rebel scum girl who’d seen his deepest, darkest secrets. Who knew his biggest fears.

Ben had considered it, then.  _Really_  considered it. Rey’s violent, nasty, lonely, unglorified end. In front of no one. No hero. Nobody. And he’d held that thought fondly on the edge of his mind, like the one word he was willing at the same time from the tip of her hateful tongue.

And as he’d fought himself from also doing something else, just as messy, he’d Force-begged her to say it.

_Yes._

But Ben had known in his heart that he could never make her say that. That she was too headstrong for that shit. And probably still was.

Rey’s past refusals did not please Ben, and yet it was those very refusals – in the snow, and again on the Supremacy – that were shaping his desire for her now.

And Ben is far too proud to admit this to Rey.

“Why?”

“What?” he asks, still lost in his own head.

 _“Why?_   Why are you too proud to admit that to me?”

Rey feels Ben use the Force again to push hard against her. He swears at himself and although Rey sighs, this time so he can hear her, she also finds herself smiling at him. Ben is funny.

“What do you mean,  _funny_?”

Rey laughs. “Forget it.”

“I won’t forget it. Tell me. Say it.”

Rey stops, smiling gently at Ben instead and gazing back. She feels a breeze, working its way lazily down the annex. Ben feels it too. It’s cool on their skin. It blows around Ben’s forehead, lifting his long hair lightly off his face and causing the shadows falling around his eyes and cheeks to shift. The light changes him, Rey notices.

Ben reads her thought. Slowly, he removes one glove and then the other. He drops both on the sand and stretches out his long fingers in front of them, feeling the breeze on his bare skin.

Sensing this quietening, an almost state of composure, peace, Rey reaches out her hand to Ben and finally allows his fingertips to brush against her own. Little, tiny touches. Cautious, as though moving along the stem of a spinebarrel, expecting but not finding anything remotely sharp. Only the gesture returned by his touch, equally cautious. Equally needy.

Rey moves her eyes gently from their hands to Ben’s own eyes, savoring her sensations of him.

“Why did you say no to me?” Ben asks her.

“Which time?”

Ben throws just the slightest hint of a wry smile in Rey’s direction. It’s enough for her. She smiles at him again at first, almost excited by the humanity she’s sensing in these strange new moments with him.

But then Rey drops her gaze, her hand, and begins to run the tip of her forefinger through the sand. She is drawing a line.

“ _That’s_  why,” she answers truthfully, nodding at the sand and then thrusting her chin in the direction of the lifeless stormtroopers, still littering the mouth of the annex.

Ben looks at her curiously, not really getting it at first. But then he feels Rey drop her use of the Force, letting him inside, so that they can share the memory together. Her memory of Han, asking Ben to help him. And Han’s reply.

_Yes. Anything._

And Ben reaches for Rey’s hand, wanting, now, to strengthen their connection with more than just a memory. Wanting to remember their physical bond, too. But Rey shakes her head and doesn’t proffer anything further in return.

“I can’t, Ben. I can’t go there again. Not yet.”

Ben sighs, looking out beyond the annex as the changing light of the late afternoon turns it gold and warm. How long has he been here? Time seems to have stopped. Irrelevant.

Abruptly, Ben stands and then starts to walk away from Rey. Resigned. Defeated.

But Rey had decided, well before she’d entered the annex, alone and knowing Ben would follow her down it, that he would not be the one to walk away from this. To end this on his terms. Not today.

And Rey uses the Force then to push out at him with all that she has. And she pins him there to the spot, mid-stride.

Heart racing, Rey waits for Ben’s counter-push. The equal and opposite Force that always comes from him to meet her own. And she waits. But it _doesn’t_ come.

And still binding Ben to the spot Rey runs at him, circling him until she faces him head on. Her furious gaze looking up at him as he looks down at her, veiled in a feeling she knows too well. Sorrow. Regret.

Rey drops her use of the Force and Ben crumples at her feet. She kneels to him and breathes him in as his mighty chest heaves in a silent grief.

“I’m sorry, Ben,” she murmurs.

And Rey holds him to her then. But Ben can’t bring himself to hold her back.

“Please just let me go,” he breathes, barely above a whisper and mostly just as a thought. Ben slips it to Rey’s mind so she will know it. Won’t need to hear it.

Ben is begging her to leave him be. Begging her to leave him alone.

And with tears in Rey’s eyes, and utter shock seeping wretchedly through her whole body now, she withdraws her arms guiltily and shrinks back from him. Ashamed. Stunned. Desperately sad.

And Ben collects the gloves, stands and walks away from Rey, then. Over the dead stormtroopers and out of the annex as she collapses in a heap, arms wrapped so tight around her convulsing chest that it hurts as she fights the rising tide of it. Of the physical pain in her body that she has somehow kept at bay as Ben had been so physically close to her again. Of the emotional pain in her heart that now grips her as tight as she clasps her knees to her chest. Trying to squash it. To crush it. To suffocate all the life from it.

And after a time, it lessens. The stress of it all. Leia’s death, racing alone for her life, whatever it is she’s been feeling for Ben since their Force-connections had begun on Ahch-To. It starts to peter out. To ebb like a tide, or to pass like moons over suns. And when the eclipse is over, purpose returns. Light.

Rey opens her eyes. Unclasps her knees. She lowers her hands until her palms can feel the cool, coarse grains of the sand below her. She digs the tips of her fingers gently under the surface of it. Back. Forth. Exploring what’s below.

Rey’s head is a mess. How long has she been here? She feels exhausted.

Rey reaches out with the Force and then quickly retreats from it. There is far too much she senses right now. She doesn’t know if her body can physically tolerate whatever it is she will find there anyway.

Slowly, Rey pushes upward with her palms to elevate herself off the sand at the end of the annex. And once outside, in the bright day of Jakku, she squints out into the heat oasis.

_Fuck._

Summoning her last remaining strength, Rey closes her eyes and again reaches out with the Force. Pushing aside Ben, Rebels, turmoil, she imagines only the transport, and what she has to do now.

 

5\. Present. Western Reaches.

“How did it go?”

Ben doesn’t need to look at Hux to see the smirk on his face. And somehow, with the gloves he’d shed on Jakku still gripped in one hand and the memory of Rey’s touch still lingering against his bare skin, Ben contains it. Barely. Just enough to gut it out. Two words.

“Leave. Now.”

 

6\. Present. Jakku.

Its subterranean rendezvous has not exactly been kind to it. Rey has to jemmy her way in with the butt of the blaster once she’s resurrected it to the surface of the sand, somewhat destroying the transport’s exit door in the process.

But after she’s managed to manually raise the vertical rolling mechanism, and pump it closed once inside, Rey realizes that the transport’s plating has mostly survived the crushing forces of the Sinking Fields on Jakku, and will probably make it out to Ahch-To.

Probably.

 

7\. Present. Kashyyyk.

It has been a huge risk. He’ll admit to that much. A once in a lifetime shot in the dark but damn, when Poe compares it again to the alternative – running out of fuel in the middle of a Mid Rim crawling with First Order spies – it has still been worth it. Dead or dead. Pick one. And Poe had.

Chewbacca has somehow been able to navigate their entry over the Black Forest on Kashyyyk, which the old Empire had never dared touch in case the Wookiee legends about it were true. Because those bastards had stripped everything else and poisoned much of the oceans with toxic runoff from undersea mining.

But now, as the few surviving Rebels start to assess their new surroundings, Chewie seems convinced that he can sniff out a clean in-ground water table that Poe hopes will keep them alive for at least the short-term. The few that are left. And whom Poe now finds himself leading by default. If you can call it leading.

Because there is no one else, so few have survived the chase from the First Order to Crait. Hell, Poe is still coming to terms with the casualties himself. And that other thing. Rey and General Organa. Abandoning them as they’d flown from Crait’s moon to Kashyyyk. Poe lives with that guilt every minute.

 

8\. Diary. Ahch-To.

This is hard to write. I’m rusty. I don’t do writing. Usually. Or haven’t done in a long time. Not exactly an essential skill to a scavenger on Jakku. Completely impractical. Hand’s cramping up already. But I read in a tome that this would be helpful, so I’m trying it. And, actually, I sort of like it now. I can do this.

“You still want to kill me... You’ve been so lonely...”

For not the first time have I engaged in this reverie. Nor others.

“You need a teacher. I can show you the ways of the Force.”

Has no idea how to speak to women. Seriously. Others still I’ve pieced together in my own head, like scrap parts, but fashioned less usefully. A lot less usefully, actually.

“You know what I’ve come for...”

“Get out of my head.”

“I’ll show you... Comfortable?... You know I can take whatever I want?”

“I’m not giving you anything.”

“We’ll see... Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.”

Told you so. Because I’ve Force-raided him as much as he’s attempted to Force-raid me on the occasions when we’ve been connected. Which I’m letting be more often. That’s why I’m doing this. Completely pragmatic decision. Problem-sorting, problem-solving. Ben is afraid.

“You… That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader…”

Wish I hadn’t actually said that though.

 

9\. Present. Ahch-To.

Rey underlines the third last word too heavily. The nib of the calligraphic pen she’s found, considerably corroded from what must be years left idle in the seaside air, collapses on itself from the weight of her hand and snaps clean in two. Ink pours from the larger remnant of the primitive implement, spattering the page and slate on which she’s been resting her work.

 _Damn it,_ she thinks.

She had the hang of this. Or thought she did.

As Rey searches her small room for something new to write with, she senses Ben. And she ignores him at first, still upset by the way he’d left her on Jakku. She wants another nib.

 _Under the slates on your left_.

“Get out of my head!”

She whirls around, acknowledging his presence at last and allowing him to enter her vision. Willfully contradicting what it is she just said.

Ben’s dark eyes have never failed to make her want to look longer. Deeper. To see the sadness she feels so acutely in him. The yearning. And to also recognize the longing she feels and knows is in her own mind and body, too.

This last thought scares Rey. And she continues to gaze at Ben, then. Searching. This is why she began writing.

What the fuck is it about Ben? Why does she just keep _looking_? There is no logical use for this. She  _hates_ him. And yet she _doesn’t_ hate him.

Hating Ben would be _so_ much easier. Hate is the  _logical choice_ , the logical label for what she  _should_  feel in response to all he has done.

And yet here she is, still fucking gazing at him. Not pulling herself away. Not resisting. She  _can_  pull herself away. She did do it. Once. Before the annex. Before Crait. Before the Supremacy.

Rey had taken – on the sly – one of the tomes from the library on Ahch-To. Snuck it back to her room. And she’d been reading it in secret, already knowing Master Skywalker’s opinion of all of the Jedi texts, but wanting to make up her own mind. Thirsty for knowledge. And hungry for her own opinion.

It was then that Rey had heard Ben speak the words again. Words she hadn’t heard since before she’d first seen his true face. Words that had intrigued her then. And that still did.

_You still want to kill me._

This had been weeks ago, when their connection was still very new and before they had touched. And Rey had been startled to hear him, physically jumping at the sound of his voice; low yet enquiring. Mildly arrogant. The arrogant bit like a bass note that ran through everything he spoke but overlaid by a melody which had sounded this time… explorative. Genuine. As though he was genuinely wondering something. Not just teasing. As though he really wanted to know how she felt.

“I’m reading, Ben. Now is not a good time.”

His mouth had twitched and Rey had felt from him the type of joy that should have evolved visibly into a full smile, which for him meant the kind that just used his eyes and mostly just the corners of his mouth.

But then, as she’d come to realize was typical behavior, he had shoved that feeling down and anger had boiled up and over instead. And his mouth had twitched in a different way and his eyes had glared, furious.

“ _Tell_  me,” he had ordered.

“ _No!_ ”

Rey had pushed out with the Force, and it had been like closing the window on a gale. She had felt the remnants of what had been moments ago, and then stillness. Silence. Her own mind had returned to her, whole and unfractured. And her room had returned, with she its sole occupant again.

And she had smiled at this achievement, proud that she was strong with the Force. Stronger than him.

“I’m doing something,” Rey says to Ben now.

He answers quietly, melodically. “I see.”

Ben drops his dark eyes.

Rey feels him begin to withdraw, but she pushes out with the Force and, this time, it’s as though she can catch hold. Of what, she doesn’t know.

But Ben feels this change in her use of it, doesn’t fight it, and instead cautiously allows his eyes to flicker ever so slightly upward, toward her again. Waits. For her to move next. For her to lead him. He breathes in.

Rey notices this, as well as his anxiety, which is strong and significant. Unwanted and getting in his way. But there is no anger toward her now. Rather, it is directed at himself. Self-frustration. Self-loathing? She can sense that this time Ben’s emotional response to her is different.

And now she remembers what she was doing before he intruded. Writing. She remembers her writing. Her writing about her thoughts. Her thoughts about Ben.

And at the same time Rey realizes what he’s said to her.

_Under the slates on your left._

And Rey’s hand slips there to find a crevice, within which is a whole calligraphic set.

“I’m doing something,” she repeats, failing to acknowledge Ben’s help and carefully looking through the set he’s helped her find for the nicest nib. There are many.

“I know.”

Now Rey feels Ben’s anxiety deepening and shifting in a typical direction. And as she reaches out with the Force to feel his familiar anger begin, with horror she realizes her failure to close their connection before carelessly turning her own thoughts back to her writing. Mortified, she Forces him out.

It is minutes before she is finally able to wrench her gaze from the place where he had been. Where she had let him project. And the familiar creep of loneliness begins to spread from where she has left herself alone.

 

10\. Diary. Ahch-To.

If I had not said that out loud, what would be happening now?

 

11\. Present. Ahch-To.

Alone again.

_Fuck._

Tossing aside the pen and nibs, too angry at herself to concentrate on writing anymore, Rey looks up to the place from where she has Forced Ben only moments ago.

_Damn it. Where is he?_

 

12\. Present. Unknown Regions.

Ben takes another swipe at the console in front of him and a fresh shower of glowering metal and plastic remnants fly from its surface amid plumes of acrid smoke.

 _But she found the nibs!_  he thinks, lashing out again with the weapon.  _How could that make her angrier at me?_

He leaves the room and heads left down the hallway, scuppering stormtroopers and dragging the tip of the saber along the wall, which makes a metallic tearing sound punctuated by a series of silences as he passes multiple doorways along the way.

This goes on for several minutes until at last he reaches his room. He Force-pushes the door closed, dumps the weapon on the floor and collapses face down on his bed.

 _Fuck this_.

 

13\. Present. Ahch-To / Unknown Regions.

Cross-legged on the stone, a worn blanket below her, Rey closes her eyes and pushes out with the Force, searching. She remembers how to breathe from her brief training. How to still her mind and her body and feel her surroundings, and what holds them together and to her, and her to them.

And when she finds Ben, she opens her eyes and slowly his huge, black form emerges in front of her, curled in the fetal position.

“Ben,” she says softly.

“We’re done. Get out.”

“No.”

Ben hasn’t moved but Rey can feel his rage roiling. His energy growing.

“No,” Rey repeats, less sure but still standing, ready. Reminding Ben she’s still there.

Rey takes a very measured step toward him, as though testing the temperature of scrap metal on a blistering day with a bare fingertip.

And as Ben pushes out in retaliation, Rey pushes back and now he is also standing, arm out-stretched. And she can sense what he’s about to do.

“ _No!_ ”

The weapon shudders but maintains its contact with the steel floor. Rey feels Ben’s renewed fury at this. At her deliberate action, designed to emasculate him. Again. And at his own additional feelings of inadequacy.

And then there is something else in Ben that is clearer than what Rey felt from him back in her room on the island. Failure. Rejection. As well as physically binding him, as though that weren’t humiliating enough, Ben knows now that Rey has found these things, too.

“ _You Forced me out!_ ” Ben screams in frustration at his failure, once again, to prevent himself from keeping his true feelings from her.

“Shhh...”

“ _Get out!_ ”

“I need to know, Ben…”

“ _What?”_

If Ben could round on Rey he would, but she still has him pinned. He spits it out.

“ _What_  do  _you need_  to  _know_?”

“Shhh...”

Rey lets go of her Force-hold on Ben's body and carefully – almost afraid to try, but just curious enough to attempt it – she Force-pushes her way further inside his head instead. Further in to his thoughts. Already having felt his surface rage, she is probing for what is below.

And Rey feels Ben resist her at first, and physically push forward and stagger as his body, so wound, falls forward in response to the removal and shift of her use of the Force.

The shock of Ben's ability to move returning causes him to let his guard down further and he realizes, too late, that Rey has entered his thoughts completely.

With a quick intake of breath, Rey realizes too, and takes another step toward Ben, never losing her connection with his dark eyes, growing ever wider. But softer.

 _Yes,_ she thinks.  _It _is_  there, like a dial._

And in Ben’s eyes and in his body, too, Rey senses the smallest change in him.

“Shhh...”  

Ben’s lips reveal the most minute tremor, but Rey already knows what he thinks. That they are standing together on the most delicate precipice, beyond his imagination, but not hers. He is terrified of it. She breathes in and he breathes out.

“I need to show you something,” Rey says softly as she takes another step toward him.

Ben doesn’t step away. But he doesn’t move closer either.

“Ben, I need to know what it means.”

“What?” he murmurs, feeling so pathetically weakened from emotional turmoil. Unable to trust his own thoughts, and unable to distinguish them from feelings.

Ben’s black eyes are the deepest ocean in the darkest orbit of the furthest corner of the galaxy. But he is so close to Rey now.

Rey reaches for Ben’s hand, still ungloved. And slowly she brushes her fingers lightly against his own, feeling them curve in response to her gentle touch and bend for her. Yield for her. And finally hold her.

And then the air that surrounds them in Ben’s room is suddenly bitterly cold, and yet nothing they can feel, consumed in the memory of the heat of their battle on the crumbling Starkiller Base.

With her hand on Ben’s wrist, Rey drives the head of his lightsaber deeper into the snow. The resultant hiss adding to the hum of the laser still shooting from its crystal, but not for long. Ben tries to resist her physical force, but he is no match for her now. She is too strong and he doubts himself too much. And with a triumphant kick from the heel of Rey’s boot his weapon is skittled and he is sprawled on his back in the snow. Black robes singed. Eyes weary, but still upon her. Exhausted. Defeated. Awed.

It is this final feeling that Rey gifts Ben now, back in his room, as she unclasps his hand and the memory fades. A feeling Rey has somehow been able to almost surgically remove from Ben’s fallible mind, and present to him like the last drop of water in a desert. Precious optimism. Light.

“Please tell me what it means.”

“What do you want me to say?” Ben prickles. “You beat me. You fucking beat me.”

Rey rolls her eyes but smiles despite it. She has seen what it means to Ben, and he bristles again at his inability to keep his true feelings from her once more.

But Rey’s smile is not lost on Ben. And she knows this, too.

“Shhh...”

Ben takes a shaky breath but says nothing. Words are failing him now, feelings are failing him.

_No, they aren’t, Ben._

He verbally retaliates again.

“For fuck’s sake,  _what do you want from me?_ ”

_Please stop pushing me out. Shhh..._

Anxiety has replaced his anger now, just as it did back in Rey’s room on Ahch-To. And she remembers how she was able to hold Ben then without actually holding him. Holding something so that he couldn’t choose to cut their connection.

And gently, Rey reaches into Ben and with her mind she uses the Force to sense his anxiety, as though it’s tangible. As though it’s rock hard. Like a dial that she can caress and will manipulate, ever so carefully with her mind if she holds it.

And when Rey does, she rolls it for just the smallest moment in time. And Ben calms ever so slightly. Like ocean after the wake made by a porg’s wing over its surface.

“Really? That’s your metaphor?”

“Stop it.”

But Rey smiles in spite of his sarcasm. Enjoying it.

“Did you  _feel_  that?  _Do_  you feel it?”

“Yes,” he whispers.

They stare at each other in silence, lost in a thought that’s now shared. With no push and no pull. With no boundary. Only balance.

Ben moves first, slowly reaching out his still bare hand toward her. And Rey responds like a mirror as a new memory engulfs them in tandem.

Of Snoke’s bisected form. The stench of cauterized flesh. The Praetorian Guards surrounding them and bringing them in and toward each other. Back to back, ever closer, the circle shrinking fast.

Ben. Prepared. Weapon raised and leaning forward to strike the hand from the nearest Guard. Driving his powerful arms to the floor. Rey. Engulfed by three. Ben knowing it, and Force-stretching out to her.

And then joining, Rey grasping the top of his thigh and sliding her hand across him. Feeling the supple inches of his garments against her skin.

 

14\. Present. Unknown Regions.

Hux is assessing the damage to the fleet ship. Growing very weary of this expensive trend, he finally speaks.

“Where is he?”

“We believe he went to his room, sir.”

 

15\. Present. Unknown Regions.

Ben can feel it still lingering as the vision around him fades. Rey’s touch at the top of his thigh. The heat in his body that he’d felt then. And what he’d known by instinct to do in response. What he’d done then, and still wanted to do. To bring his hips closer to hers.

Very cautiously, this thought makes its way to Rey. Heart hammering, she takes another small step toward Ben. Her hand is still clasped around his. She can feel the soft skin of him below her own calloused palm and she is close enough now to hear his breath, which comes in shallow bursts. Nervous. Like her own.

With her thumb, Rey traces the hard joint at the base of Ben’s, just below his wrist. Circling it lightly as she continues to look into his eyes and watching him stare back. Fretful and anxious.

Ben’s eyes flick to Rey’s mouth as now he feels her hand snake its way up to his wrist as she notes his new focus, and as the tips of his fingers brush her own in response she is almost as close as she was on the Supremacy. And he is closer than ever to her waist as his fingers start to trail their way up her forearm, mirroring her own actions.

She takes another small step toward Ben and now he knows he could hold her. She is within easy reach. Again Ben’s eyes flick to her mouth, and again this is not lost on Rey. Sensing his fear, but knowing what now lies below it, with the smallest shift Rey circles his forearm so that her hand is at the outside of his arm, and softly she presses it to her flank.

Ben’s hand makes contact with the fabric of her outer garments, and as he feels her body draw nearer to his own he brings his hand to the small of her back. With eyes now fixed on her mouth he watches it open ever so slightly as Rey feels his hand at her back. Hovering above and between her hips. Poised at the top of her curves. He longs to trail it lower but doesn’t dare.

And as this thought drifts to her mind now she closes her eyes, momentarily losing her orientation and suddenly feeling Ben’s cheek brush against her own. The sensation of his face against hers is soft, warm and electric. And Rey tilts her head up, cocking her jaw so that his mouth is millimeters from the skin of her neck now. She can feel his light, hot breath on it. And she leans in to him.

Ben’s lips brush against the skin of Rey’s proffered neck. He hears her breathe his name as he breathes in the scent of her. A scent like earth, and the surfaces of planets. A scent like nothing onboard the sterile interiors of starships. And he closes his eyes and just exists, then. Feeling her hips, as now she presses them ever so slightly against his own.

“Fuck,” he murmurs as his mouth moves closer to her ear and he feels Rey’s own breath deepen. Hears the sound of it now. Ever so slightly ragged.

As Ben’s mouth moves slowly behind her ear, following the source of her scent, and he presses his lips softly against the skin he finds behind it, he feels the pressure from her hips increase.  The slightest arch begins in the small of her back as now her chest brushes against his own and her neck is brought closer to his mouth. And then he hears her murmur to him, barely above a whisper.

“Ben, _how_  is this  _even_ …”

_Stop._

He tears himself from her so abruptly that she almost feels physically maimed. Her body brutally wrenched from its trance and abandoned. Thrown back and into the limits of physical reality.

And Rey looks up at Ben, shocked and confused. She tries to push out but he is closed to her now, and she is wounded. Missing him already.

“You need to leave. I need to go.”

Ben pushes Rey further away as he turns toward the door but won’t leave until he sees her gone.

“ _Please_ ,” he adds.

But he already knows the damage is done. Ben has hurt Rey again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Hopefully this chapter is now less jumpy and easier to follow. Further feedback and requests are very welcome and help me make this work better (I hope) so please keep them coming!


	2. Ahch-To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey’s memories of Ben persist. And as General Hux forms a plan to remove Kylo Ren as Supreme Leader, memories are also beginning to trouble Poe.

1\. Past. Ahch-To.

The path was hard to find by torchlight, but he had trudged these steps on countless occasions. He could do this in the dark if he wanted to, could do it in his sleep, he knew the way that well. And he could still feel the pull of the ancient tree, but he had not wished to acknowledge it for many, many years now. Had turned his back on it long ago, when he’d done the same to the pointless quests of the past to be right. To be good. And to  _only_ be good. 

_That’s impossible._

Luke Skywalker had retreated from the whole of the Force then. Because as it was, unforgiving, it could not accept him any longer. And he knew it.

_But there’s someone who still could._

And so now, pushing aside all the sadness and regret that he had felt for so long, for both himself and for his shameful past, with something akin to hope Luke placed the tome in the library. The Tome of the Last Jedi.

And he began his wait for the girl.

 

2\. Present. Unknown Regions.

_Will you help me?_

As Ben slips the gloves around his hands once more, flexing his fingers to re-stretch the leathers into place again, he can hear it. The echo. Of words that have plagued him for weeks. Words that he’s heard in his head time and time again since he uttered them. And that replay no matter his state of consciousness. In waking hours. During dreams. And as he struggles to sleep at all.

Even as Rey had disappeared from his view. In his room. As he’d told her – ordered her – to go, he had heard them again.

And the onset of another seismic spiral begins then in Ben. He can feel it anew, knowing all too well what it means. That before too long the walls of his head will crash around him once again and the façade of control that he clings to will slip. If it even still exists to any of them anymore. The subordinates that surround him.

“Sir?”

“Prepare my ship.”

 

3\. Present. Ahch-To.

Minutes and more pass by Rey as she lets herself lie here, on the blanketed sleeping stone, while she runs her calloused palms over the tome she holds in them.

It is not as ancient as the others. The pages are still white in places, where the light has not yet had the chance to touch them. The folds in the signatures are still crisp, not softened and buffed like those of the others. Mildew has not yet spawned inside its covers, and beetles have not yet made their meals from parts of the hand-sewn binding, burrowing in the spaces left to form homes for their offspring, who will spend their first moments of life chewing through the wisdom of the past. Ignorant but still hungry.

Rey has read these pages more times now than she cares to count. She extends the hand holding Master Skywalker’s tome out over the edge of the stone and drops it. The book falls with a soft thud on the outer clothes that she’d earlier discarded on the floor of the hut, when she’d first returned here after the recent Force-connection with Ben.

Rey drops her arm, letting it hang limply down the side of her makeshift bed. And her fingers brush against her own tome, then, that she’s been using to write her own muddled verses over the course of the recent weeks. Since she’d first stolen all the Jedi texts from Ahch-To. Verses full of increasing confusion. More questions than answers.

 _Who am I meant to be_?

Feeling herself sliding into another spiral of navel-gazing, Rey curls her body now into a tight ball on the stone.

If she could only get up and off this unsympathetic rock. Get out. Maybe eat something. Train. Get strong. Return to the Resistance.

Then, maybe, she could forget.

But all she can do is think again about Ben. His hand pressed to the small of her back. His lips at her neck. And then behind her ear. And the feeling he’d begun inside her. A fire. Heat between her thighs. A slow pulse beating away in her sex. Still there. And she wriggles again.

_Fuck._

In an effort to distract herself, Rey uses the Force to reach out to the Rebels. Also still there. Rey knows that she will feel it if they suddenly are gone. But it’s reassuring to use the Force again now. To remember that it’s still there too. Surrounding her, within her, and holding her to the physical world.

She can trust it. She cannot trust Ben.

Ben.

_Will you help me?_

And she hears it again. It had started not so long ago. After he’d pushed her away. His voice in her head. Saying words he’d never spoken to her, but that she had overheard. But to Rey it’s as good as Ben. Asking her to help him.

And again, she can feel his hand on the small of her back, his lips behind her ear and the pulse of her desire. Her own yearning.

_Fuck this._

Aroused, in desperate need of a distraction, Rey pulls herself up off her scant bed and into a sitting position. Reluctantly, she drops her hand to the floor again and does pick up her own book, then, before scanning the room briefly for the pen Ben had helped her to mend.

 

4\. Diary. Ahch-To.

“Will you help me?”

Okay, so I’m trying this again. Because I don’t know what else to do. And I’m… frustrated.

Why the fuck didn’t he ask me this?

“Will you help me?”

Probably because I told him that he was afraid. So what if I hadn’t done that? What if I’d done… what I did in his room. Shown him memories. Shown him… turning points.

Dials.

 

5\. Present. Ahch-To.

And it _had_ felt  _real_ _._ What Rey had somehow been able to do to Ben with the Force. To reach inside him and turn his emotions. Like turning a dial.

That’s the only way she could think of at the time to describe it, so used as she was to the detritus of space junk, accrued from so many moons spent on the surface of Jakku. Rey had named it a dial but it wasn’t. It was just, somehow, this thing that she could see, and that’s how she imagined she could do it.

Because had that not been Master Skywalker’s third lesson, promised to her by him before the Force-connections with Ben had first started on the island?

But her Master had not taught her this. Had not had time to show her this before she’d cracked it, fed up with the wretched sea stink of the place. The questionable feeding habits Luke endured. And her one-time Master’s sheer stubborn reluctance to return with her and Chewbacca, aboard the Millennium Falcon, and back to the Rebellion and the fight.

But Rey had already read about it. Not realizing what it meant, nor the extent of what it could now do.

_Do or do not._

She had pictured it, pictured doing it, and then done it.

Rey had willfully affected Ben.

But how was that even possible? _This was_ _Ben_. Not some foot soldier. _Kylo._ A Knight of Ren. Trained not just from tomes but practice. Learned. Experienced. Knowing and wise about the ways of the Force. Light. Dark.

And now Rey remembers _all_ of the times he’s touched her, and she him. Not just the one that keeps teasing at her now but earlier times, too. On the island and in the snow. In the forest and on the Supremacy.

And at _each_ of those times she’d been able to do it – touch him, but also _reach in_ and touch him. Sometimes without even being there physically with him. Being half a galaxy away, being _Force-connected._ But as far as Rey knew, from all that she’d read in the tomes, there was no recorded precedent for this; projection and then onset.

And then Rey remembers something else. The realization she’d sensed in Leia as they’d sat together on the Falcon, still docked on the surface of Crait and after she’d closed the door on her vision of Ben; that in her Master’s exile on Ahch-To he had  _discovered_  it.

“But what the fuck _is_  it?” she breathes as she picks up her writing again.

 

6\. Present. Wild Space.

Just as reflections on a polished veneer, toying with the extent of vision, distances are impossible to judge in open space, physical proximities. Limits.

The understandings of where objects begin and conclude. Of where origins lie, or journeys cease. They don’t. Focus is not ever actually achieved by the human eye, but tracked like an afterthought, in analytical hindsight, and to satisfy logic.

To satiate the need for rationality and explanation. Elemental definitions. Of shape, tone and light. With edges and boundaries that can only be determined in the past tense. A product of scrutiny, achieved by machines.

This is why Ben likes it here, where the impossible can exist. Alone but coxed, his broad palms flat against the clinical instruments of the console, he gazes out beyond the Silencer’s objective dials and toward no horizon. No heroic frontier.

Instead Ben looks inward, and desperately searches for the precipice he already knows he can’t find solo.

_Am I still a monster?_

 

7\. Present. Ahch-To.

Rey reads back to herself what she’s scribed on the page with the pen that Ben helped her to mend.

_Monster._

She can hear the echo of his voice in her head again. Can see his mouth force the syllables out, reminding her of how she’d labelled him in the snow.

_Monster._

 

8\. Present. Wild Space.

Ben can still feel the pain he’s caused her, but he can’t see Rey. She is Forcing him out again, he can sense it. And that she has somehow learned to do this. As well as something else, something that Ben has never known possible, in all his training. Across his years under Snoke, and before that the months spent under his traitorous Jedi uncle.

_See you round, kid._

He  _is_  a child.

_A child in a mask._

Ben feels himself imploding again. Unable to distinguish his past from his present. Unable to navigate. Betrayed. Destroyed. And yet with no collision in sight. Just endless hurtling toward a destruction that for some reason he desperately hopes for but doesn’t want. A propulsion that he wishes would just end but feels so pathetically incapable of starting.

Ben recalls Hux, over-riding his command to continue firing on Skywalker. And he thinks again of Rey. Her deception after Crait, and before that her rejection of his offer onboard the Supremacy. Had he not attained the ultimate power there, murdering his former Master and fulfilling his destiny to succeed his grandfather as Leader?

_I’ve given everything I have to you… to the Dark side._

And Ben cannot shake the memory of the physical feel of Rey. He can still feel her against the bare skin of his hands. Her hips against his, her chest beginning to press itself to him also as he’d found the soft skin behind her ear and she’d breathed his name. And in the near darkness of the Silencer’s interior he imagines her now against his body.

His hips pressing hard at her own. And the heat in him growing.

 

9\. Present. Ahch-To.

Rey floors the book and pen and reclines on the blanketed stone. She closes her eyes, no closer to solving any of the problems that trouble her. And suddenly she senses Ben again.

Rey sighs. It’s been a _fucking_ long day. Does she _want_ to open them? Does she even _have_ the energy for this? For his turmoil again? There’s so much already in her own mind and body and writing certainly hasn’t solved it. What else could?

But the pulse is still there.

Through the Force Rey feels Ben is close to her now. Not quite as close as he’d been when they’d been Force-connected in his room. But still close. And the memory of his mouth at her neck returns. His soft lips brushing behind her ear. Tentatively, Rey opens her eyes.

Ben lies opposite her on the stone, facing inward. She shifts slightly on the blanket lining it, suddenly aware that her underclothes, plus a few inches of space, are the only things separating their bodies now. They look at each other.

The light through the hut is soft. The air is not warm. No blanket covers Rey and suddenly she wishes one did. This is awkward. But enticing.

“Are you cold?”

The sound of Ben’s soft voice is oddly reassuring.

Rey drops her eyes, realizing he can read her.

Ben’s lips twitch as he realizes too, and in response to her subtle sign of interest. Arousal.

“I’m okay,” she murmurs.

“I’m warm,” he whispers.

_Touch me._

“No,” she breathes, but as her gaze lifts once again to his he can see the beginnings of the smile she’ s trying to quash, and realizes she’s teasing. And he feels the heat he’d felt for her earlier begin again. Begin to intensify.

Ben takes a very deep breath. Slowly, still reading her, he brings his hand across to her flank. Lightly, he runs his fingertips up and then down the exposed skin he finds there, astonished by how soft it feels beneath even this slightest touch.

Rey closes her eyes, and her mouth forms a very small ‘o’ of pleasure. The muscles around her sex continue to pulse. Ben reads her and now he can sense where to go. What to touch and how hard. She is going to guide him without touching. A pilot.

Rey opens her eyes again and Ben looks at her. Carefully, he moves his hand from her flank to her upper underclothes and gently unfastens the material. Loosening it. Then, very gently – nervous – he guides one of her arms so that it comes to rest above her head, elbow bent so he can catch her wrist with his right hand, over the tops of their heads. He has her gently pinned.

Ben’s lips tremble again. Rey takes in a series of quick, light breaths through her mouth as her eyes continue to stare at him, not able to keep them from dashing across his face every moment or so, often to his lips, but always returning to his dark eyes.

Ben brings his left hand up her flank again and toys with the loosened fabric of her upper underclothing. Reading her again, slowly he slips his fingers below the material to find the soft, warm curve of her breast.

Rey can’t keep still any longer. She arches her back so that she pushes herself further into his palm and hears him gasp softly as she watches his eyes close for a moment. Ben dips his head toward her neck as it arches further with the rest of her upper body. Toward him.

Ben gently closes his palm over the curve of her, feeling her stiffening nipple. Feeling her chest rise and fall below his hand, and his length beginning to stiffen. He brings his mouth to her neck and can smell her again, the earthy scent he’d smelt in his room. Intoxicating.

Ben opens his mouth and softly kisses her skin. Rey gasps, unable to keep from pressing her hips hard against his in response to this and gasping again as she feels him against her. Hard.

And Ben struggles now to control it. The desire he feels for Rey. Wanting her now more than ever. Remembering the way she’d looked, laid out before him on Starkiller Base. As he’d interrogated her. But this was so much more delicious. Because he knew. Could read her. That she wanted him now.

Ben places his broad palm flat against Rey’s flank as he lifts his mouth from her neck and lowers it to her chest. Nuzzling below the fabric of her upper underclothes and finding with his tongue her nipple. As he circles it, teasing and tasting it, he hears her say his name before he closes his whole mouth around it and gently sucks.

Rey groans with pleasure at this before she can contain it, and hearing this Ben pulls his mouth away and brings it back to her neck. Nuzzling the skin of it before brushing his lips against her cheek and then looking at her mouth. So close now.

_Kiss me._

“No,” she murmurs.

Ben reads her again. Slowly, he runs his fingers down her flank once more. Working now at her lower undergarments. Working them down and around her hips as he feels her wriggling now below him. Lifting her hips, helping him.

Ben flattens his palm at her left hip, shaping it to the contour of her body and turning it slightly, so he can gently roll her hips over, squaring them to his own.

As Rey's hips roll, her thighs part slightly and Ben slips two fingers just inside her, mesmerized by the warmth he finds there. She groans softly again, with less attempt this time to hide it from him, and hears his breathing increase, deepen and quicken.

Ben moves his fingers deeper inside her and then places his thumb against her clit, circling quickly and feeling her warmth grow and her muscles contract around them, yearning for more.

Rey's breath is heavy now. Ben pours his gaze over her body, still gently pinning her arm above her head so she’s stretched out beneath his bulk. Her breasts rising and falling heavily as her body starts to move ever closer to its peak.

Rey's hips begin to buck against Ben's hand as he continues to rub his thumb against her while watching the bulge of his cock grow beneath the fabric of his garments, lengthening and longing for her. Bringing his mouth once more to her ear, brushing her cheek with his own.

And as Ben feels Rey reach climax he withdraws his hand, frees his cock roughly and enters her. Sliding in to her slick, warm cunt and fighting with everything in him not to finish then and there, she feels that good around him. And below him, where he still has her pinned to the stone.

Ben thrusts hard and fast as she wraps her legs around his hips, letting him in deeper inside her to hit her cervix rapidly. And then at last he relinquishes his hold on her arm and Rey brings her hand to his face. Searching with her other for the back of his hair and the nape of his neck. Finally driving his head to her own and opening her mouth to consume his as his own climax begins inside her, as he is no longer able to prevent it.

Ben’s body threatens to cave in on Rey’s. Taking advantage of his weakness, she coaxes him over and on to his back. He arches his neck, eyes half closed but still on her as her mouth finds his jaw and then she lowers her head to bury it in the fabric of his cowl. Feeling his warmth and his powerful arms around her. Smelling him again. Hearing his breath as it calms.

After a time, Ben turns her gently so they face the same direction. His chin resting on her shoulder. The stone hut around them is dark but for the early evening light that enters now through the single window to their left. Filtering softly through it.

“Look at it,” he breathes.

Rey crinkles her brow, still lost in their sex and the lingering scent of it. Now lost in his voice, too.

“Huh?” she mumbles.

“There is light, here,” Ben murmurs. “Dark, too.”

Rey shifts her body slightly so she can nuzzle his face in an effort to focus more thoroughly on what he’s saying. Unsure of where it’s going.

“Interplay,” he continues, his voice still soft.

Ben pauses briefly as Rey gazes out into the semi-darkness.

"No truly dark place in the galaxy at all," he breathes. "Without it. The light.”

Briefly, Ben pauses again. To Rey, it's as though this is the first time he's ever thought this. She hangs on his every word.

"And," he continues, still slowly, "this is also true of the dark.”

Rey’s crinkle evolves to a frown. Something pulls at her then. A memory. Has she heard this before? Or does it remind her of something?

“Light,” he says, “casts shadow. Danger, depth, dimension.”

“No…”

“ _Yes_. We’re _not_ ourselves without the push and pull of both. You say both are in me. Rey, they are both in you, too.”

Ben pauses again, as though testing the sounds of the words as they hang in the air. Letting them sink into him and reflecting on how they feel. How they fit.  _If_  they fit.

“You can’t _deny_ it. Who _I_ am. Who _you_ are."

Ben sighs as he feels Rey freeze. And now she knows where she’s heard this before. What it reminds her of. The elevator on the Supremacy. And the throne room.

"The First Order and the Jedi have taught us to be blind to half our power. But without one, there can’t be the other."

And now Rey understands the vague feeling. This isn't going down a path she wants to follow. Ben has tried this out on her before.

 _"We can harness them,"_ he breathes, knowing she’s tense and imploring her now to stay with him.

" _Together_ we can defeat the relics of a binary past and bring true balance to the galaxy. As _nuanced_ leaders. Rey, _no one_ could stand in our way. _No one.”_

Rey realizes her cheeks are wet with tears. She wants to believe in everything Ben’s said. Wanted to the first time as well. And now, again, as he holds her here in his arms, she wants to imagine a future with Ben. But his renewed talk of power, defeat and leading outright truly frighten her. These are not _her_ ideas. These motivations do _not_ drive _her_ , no matter how good it feels to fuck him.

Ben, however, does seem to Rey to believe in it all. And, if to save him from the First Order – _turn him_ – means likewise believing in the things he keeps thinking and saying then how could she refute him? What _would_ it then mean to stand in his way?

And knowing Ben can read her thoughts Rey lets him know all these too, so that he understands her struggle now. She lifts her hand to the thin pale scar that runs the length of the right side of his face, neck and chest.

“There is no line inscribed in sand, Ben, that separates the light from the dark,” Rey murmurs to him, tracing his scar with her fingertips. “I know that now. But there  _is_  one in our minds. In our feelings, and in our hearts.”

Ben gazes at her, his eyes flicking from hers to her lips, and back again. His breath coming in nervous, shallow bursts.

_I’ve given everything I have…_

" _Yes,”_ Rey breathes, reading the thought. “I _know_.”

And then she realizes something else. Remembers it. The origin of the fear in Ben.

“You  _are_  like your grandfather, Ben. But not in the way you think.”

Ben stares at her.

“What do _you_ know of him?” he breathes, shocked by her statement. On edge.

"I know,” Rey replies, “what it is we do when we touch but are light years away. There  _has_  been a change, a shift in the Force.”

“You _don’t_ know that,” Ben challenges.

“Ben _, I do_ ,” she says. And he knows she’s not lying. Can feel it.

“Ben _,_ _your grandfather_ was _not_ the teacher, not the leader you think he was.  _Search your feelings_. The _real_ teacher was your  _uncle_. The  _real_ leader, Ben, was Luke. Master Skywalker showed Darth Vader that it was not Light but _compromise_ that could bring balance to the Force. And that within him Darth Vader kept in his heart what was missing from the whole galaxy. The  _choice_  to be balanced.”

“No.”

“ _Yes, Ben._ I have _read_ it. The tome Luke _wrote_. The Tome of the Last Jedi.”

And Rey suddenly senses that for this to survive – whatever they’ve begun – sides have to become irrelevant. Lines. Divisions. Boundaries.

_Let the past die._

Ben feels an inopportune pull at the edge of his mind. Darkness. His time here is up. They’re looking for him. With guilt in his heart he says it, wishing he didn’t have to.

“I need to go.”

“Because of what I said?”

“No.”

And Ben knows that she can sense it now too. That he doesn’t need to explain it. Gently, he untangles his limbs from Rey then and stands as she rolls her body away to face the wall and only sense him leave. So that she doesn’t have to actually watch it.

Rey closes her eyes. Alone again.

 

10\. Present. Unknown Regions.

_Talk to me._

But she is still blocking him. At what he doesn’t quite know. She seemed to understand why he’d left.

Through the massive viewport, from his central position on the bridge of the hull, Ben stares at nothing in particular. He is blocking the dull inner noise of the Destroyer’s command centre, behind and around him.

On Kylo Ren’s orders, the fleet is preparing for another short hyperspace jump through the 7G sector. Somewhere in the background is Hux, spouting drivel. Making sniveled threats. Big-noting and still gloating from how easily Skywalker’s stunt had fooled Ren, whom Hux knows is incapable of genuinely effective command. Of true leadership. A dominator he may be, but an orator he is not. Hux will always have him beaten there. And knows it.

Ben drops his gaze slightly. Lost in another spiral of self-doubt, he remembers now how Rey had tensed at what he’d said. As he’d told her once again of his own ideas. And then how she had mentioned Skywalker. And his fucking tome. _Alleged_ tome. Ben was not yet prepared to believe in its existence. The reverence she still held for him was vile. His traitorous uncle.

_The real leader._

Who’d made a fool of him.

Ben knows he’s growing stronger with the Force. He played Snoke to perfection on the day he and Rey had murdered his former Master.

And what sort of Jedi was she, anyway? What Jedi indeed would collaborate with the Dark side to overthrow a sitting Supreme Leader? Had she actually thought of him as Resistance material then? As some sort of ally?

Ben had approached her, after the death, but she’d turned her attention away from him and back to the Rebels' irritating escape to Crait. This had annoyed him. Why? He’d wanted something from her then. Needed something. Validation? She’d denied him.

Ben weighs all this now, and not for the first time. These questions have troubled him for weeks, have returned to him daily. He can’t shake them. They ricochet inside his head from dawn until dusk. They keep him awake at night. And when he does sleep, they worm their way into his dreams.

“Supreme Leader.”

Hux’s mocking tones pierce the bubble of Ben’s introspection, and his immediate surroundings are returned to him in brutal clarity.

“Radar indicates several large magnetospheres are blocking our current path. Permission sought to minimize potential damage to the fleet.”

“How?”

“Well, sir, we could avoid the system completely and instead…”

“No. Make the jumps shorter. Maintain our current course.”

 

11\. Diary. Ahch-To.

Master Skywalker was able to completely close himself off from the Force because he’d stopped using it entirely. There are times when I can block Ben but he can still sense me through the Force, I suppose because I still use it. But he can’t block me out completely. And then… when we are together, there is something else that happens. Why are there times when I can manipulate him? Can he, is he, manipulating me but I just don’t realize? Is that why the Dark calls to me? Does he do that? Is he manipulating the Dark in me? Do I trust him? Have I started to trust him already, but shouldn’t be? Is he still trying to turn me?

 

12\. Present. Unknown Regions.

“Yes, sir. But really, the Ilum system is…”

Out of mostly just habit but still a little sheer desire, even after all this time, Kylo Ren Force-shoves Hux and he crumples against the western wall of the bridge.

“To the Ilum system,” Hux squeaks.

 

13\. Present. Ahch-To.

Rey stops dead. The  _Ilum_  system?

Turfing her writing gear, she scrabbles for the pile of tomes to her left, desperately shuffling and not caring about their fragility anymore.

 _The Ilum system._   _I know that._

 _Where_  had she read it? And it was only recently too, when she and Leia were beginning to discuss the plans to rebuild the Resistance, after the massacre on Crait.

And when Rey finds it, her heart skips a beat. 

_Ben, no!_

14\. Present. Unknown Regions.

And there it is, as Ben had known it would be. He can hear her again. Calling his name. There is no attempt to block him now.

_Meet me._

_What?_

_On Ilum._

Reaching out with the Force, he sees her again. Her captivating eyes wide and terrified.

 _Please_ , he adds.

Not that  _that_  has ever worked on Rey. But nonetheless he shows her the way from the island.

And then she is gone from his sight. Blocking him again.

 

15\. Present. Ahch-To.

Rey is furious with him, and yet what else can she do but follow the course he’s just Force-shown her? To the arctic world on the planet Ilum, of all places. Home of the Crystal Caves. She has read about them.

What in galaxy’s name is he planning to do on Ilum? Re-occupy it? Annihilate it? Or should she take him at face value? Is Ben really just wanting to talk to her now? Or more? What they’d just done on Ahch-To… But if so, why _there?_ This had to be a trick. He was regretting what he’d done and this was payback.

How Rey wished she could contact her friends as she wonders again of their fates. Of what is happening to Finn. To Poe and Chewie? And of what they would do if they only knew of the First Order’s plans now. Of going to Ilum: a site holy to the Jedi Order for centuries. It was documented.

Rey knows what her Master would have done. Knows what he would have said. Master Skywalker had warned Rey of Snoke’s treacherous ways, and his wisdom she had foolishly doubted, and instead gone straight to Ben, and probably straight to her death, had it not also been for Ben. Her Master would have warned her in the same way about this.

But logic and purpose seem to be commanding Rey less and less lately. And remembering this, she pushes aside her rational mind and searches her feelings now. And what she finds is the spark of hope she needs to calm her racing heart, so she can breathe again and placate her mind in turn. Creating a circle. A balance.

_Focus. You need a decent ship._

Rey can’t recall a time when she’s dressed more quickly. She tears from the hut, sprinting up the grassy embankment to the rocky outcrop and spying it again, below the waves: her Master’s discarded X-wing. Currently farming barnacles.

_Light. Darkness. Serenity._

But this time there is more in Rey. There is struggle, distraction, frustration also, and the tiniest quiver of hesitation begins.

_Focus._

And the water turns viscous, pushing against her. Opposing her. And the ship is too heavy. She can feel its weight, no longer light and one with her mind, her body. No longer a part of her. And boundaries begin to appear, when once they had faded. Sharp lines. Divisions. Conflict.

_Focus!_

And the quiver becomes a tremor through her mind of doubt that jolts and shakes the Dark awake again. She can feel it. She can hear it. It calls to her once more from below the island. The mirrored room. The search for her parents. Ben. His vision. It creeps into her heart.

_You come from nothing. You're nothing._

_No!_

Tears well in Rey’s eyes, but she fights them. She pushes out again as she pictures what she needs to do. And shoving the memory of Ben aside instead she pictures herself doing it, just like she’s done it before.

_Do it!_

The Sinking Fields, and the rocks on Crait.

_Fucking do it!_

This is  _not_  calm. This is  _not_  Light. Rey feels a fury that she knows is not right.

_To be good. And to only be good._

And as she feels it build and strengthen her resolve, so too she feels the water turn clear, the ship at last become lighter, and Rey becomes one with every living thing in between them.

And something else returns then too. Something her Master did not say but wrote. It is something that she has read, but the words are being spoken by a vision of Ben.

_Good. Evil. Peace. Passion. Order. Chaos. A balance._

And suddenly she is inside Ben. Rey sees the dial she was able to feel in him, and roll, and the starship below the surface of the ocean, off the coast of Ahch-To, is suddenly not a ship at all but an extension of her own mind. It  _is_  her. It  _is_  Ben.

 _Breathe_.  _Just breathe._

The fury in her mind is calming now, and her breathing is soothing her. The Light is returning, but the Dark has not left her. She can still feel it.

And Rey brings the Dark  _and_  the Light with her as the X-wing breaks the surface of the ocean. Gently, she brings it to rest on the flat outcrop of rock above the shoreline, opening her eyes to see it, still in shock about how it was done. What she did. What she saw. Who she heard. Ben.

But as seawater pours from its cannons, Rey’s keen eyes survey the craft and she realizes she has more urgent problems now. Big problems. Both wings are missing foil. A lot of foil. Rey wrenches herself to her senses and brings herself back to purpose.

_Fuck. Think. Chewie._

Chewbacca had thrown the door clear off its hinges. Rey had thought at the time it was an odd place for S-foil. And after carrying it back to the shore and the ship, it doesn’t take her long to disassemble the pieces, with implements she finds in her Master’s former hut.

Rey patches the wing structures. There is still fuel in the transport, which she decants to re-fuel the starship. And finally, unsure if she will ever return, Rey gathers her things. The tomes. Her writing. Blankets. And she sets the course for Ilum, leaving Ahch-To at last.

 

16\. Present. Ilum System.

Cradling his left elbow, still smarting from its inglorious impact with the side of the ship, Hux scowls through the viewport at the Silencer, growing smaller and smaller as it careens toward the planet on which the Supreme Leader has just, by request, been delivered.

 _Fucking arsehole_ , Hux thinks to himself.

 

17\. Present. Ilum.

Ben listens to the sound of his boots on the snow, which has lain untouched for who knows how long. Since at least the last fall. No footprints. Fresh. The sound is crisp. He can hear the icicles. The tiny flakes, each one different and no two the same, die as he moves above them.

There are moments when his leather-clad feet hit rock. It disfigures the pure white landscape, like the scar across his face. Incomplete without it. Dishonest without it. And Ben knows that the dark of the rock is imperative to the light of the snow. And, in fact, if he stares at just snow he will be blinded, as the light destroys his vision. The dark is respite. A relief. Necessary.

Ben looks to the skies of Ilum, sensing the path that will open to him once the snowstorms move eastward. He watches their tall funnels skiff across the horizon, moving off to his right.

And then as the sunset begins, and their silhouettes turn from azure to gold, the western storms split from their eastern counterparts and the opening reveals itself, as he knew it would. Ben closes his eyes and remembers it. Commits to it. And it to him.

And he moves onward, across the icy landscape of Ilum, and toward the Crystal Caves. To wait for Rey.

 

18\. Present. Ilum.

As she enters the planet’s orbit, and pilots the ship through the chilly atmosphere, Rey notes the ice crystals forming on the viewport ahead of her, and on the tips of the wings out the side-views. Tall, funnel-shaped clouds move across the curve of the horizon as she descends toward the arctic surface, steering the ship first through the stratus clouds and then below them, to see a darkening landscape littered by ribbons of an even darker rock.

The X-wing draws a long, late shadow as she lands it on the narrow, frozen plateau. And the dark mouth of the Caves in the east is apparent as the suns complete their set, the last of their inky, amethyst light illuminating the entrance. Just as Ben had shown her.

Rey wraps her blankets around herself and departs the ship, bracing her body against the icy gale that blows across the surface of the frozen ground. And she feels relief when at last she enters the archway, marking the beginning of the labyrinthine tunnels below the surface of Ilum. The mouth of the Crystal Caves.  

 

19\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Poe walks back toward the Rebel camp, along the trail which has become easier to see lately, as they’ve gradually walked it in over the past few weeks. The slashed vegetation has turned brown now, as their feet have trampled it down, little by little over time, to form a soft covering over the damp floor of the Black Forest.

As Poe nears the clearing, atop the hill on which their tree huts stand in various states of construction, he marvels at how they’ve rebuilt in the way they have. He is lucky to be the leader of such a resourceful group. And he stops just outside of their small, evolving village, as the darkness deepens and their torches burn brightly through the mist that always shrouds this landscape. Sending out soft haloes of light into the trees, which pulse with energy, courage, faith. And his eyes are drawn upward, to the skies. To the three moons of Kashyyyk as they rise. All new slivers.

 _Symbols of hope_ , thinks Poe.

And he smiles to himself, ready to return to his comrades. Allies. Friends. To bed and then sleep. Ready for tomorrow. Another day for planning the fight back against the tyranny they’ve faced for too long. And Poe only takes a few steps before it stops him. His vision. He shakes his head to clear it.

 _Gotta lay off Chewie’_ s  _moonshine_ , he thinks wryly.

But as the Wroshyr-tree in front of him starts to change shape, his breathing almost stops.

“What the…?”

The deep green of its foliage lightens. Its leaves become brighter, glinting and glowing impossibly in the darkness of the night that has now settled in, across the planet’s face. Its branches grow thinner. Its leaves more delicate.

And mesmerized, Poe suddenly realizes what it is he now sees. This is not a Wroshyr-tree at all.

_I know this._

But he can’t believe it. It is a thing he knows, remembers, only from childhood. On which he played as a boy. But something is very different about it now.

There is himself, high up. A youth. This part is familiar. He can feel the way his knees used to hug this tree as he’d climb it. But on the ground, underneath its golden limbs, there is also a girl. And she is very small. He can see her in profile. Running. Playing. Much younger than he, but yet there is something so familiar about her.

And now the girl turns and she looks at him. Her face open, her eyes wide. And the smile is one he already knows.

The girl reaches out, with both her hand and her heart. To him. For him. For Poe.

“Yavin 4,” she says clearly, but not in the voice of a girl at all, as the golden light surrounding the tree envelops her small girl’s frame.

And tears wet Poe’s eyes now, because he knows the voice he hears.

 _“But it can’t be_ ,” he breathes.

 

20\. Present. Ilum.

The bare expanse of her back is stretched out before him, like a landscape. The warm glow of the fire flickers light and shadow off and over her as he places his hands at her hips, feeling her rise and fall, and he hears her breath coming in heavier gasps now, although she’s trying to contain it. To maintain composure.

Ben presses his torso against the warmth of Rey’s skin and places his mouth just below her right ear, kissing gently. He runs his tongue over this place now, before closing his lips gently around her lobe.

Ben feels again the gentle undulation of her hips as Rey’s arousal grows. Feels her neck involuntarily arch against him, forcing it closer to his mouth, so that he can also reach her collarbone. And he forces himself to ignore his own hardening length for now as he tries to slow down, to slow her down, and prolong it. Ben lifts his mouth off her skin and hears Rey cry out softly in protest.

“Shhh,” he murmurs as he breathes her in, all effort on slowing his breathing and tempering the heat for her, growing with his cock.

Ben lifts his body from her, hands still on her, and rolls her over and toward him. Again, he places his mouth to her ear to softly take now her left lobe in his mouth, and then run his tongue down the warm skin of her neck, to her clavicle again, feeling her arch away in pleasure against him once more, and raising her back off the blanket, lifting her breasts toward him.  And Ben’s mouth finds one of them, hovering above and around it before his tongue finds her nipple, too, and very lightly circles it. Teasing.

“Ben,” Rey breathes, as he continues to toy it firm with his tongue, her hips pressing now against his even firmer cock, which he is losing the battle to control as her thighs make their way around his hips.

“No,” he breathes.

And with a huge effort he lifts them away from her as she moans a protest he ignores for now, and instead closes his whole mouth on her nipple, sucking it as she presses it into him hard. And his hands find the curves of her hips, the contours of her belly, to feel her pleasure growing below. And Ben brings his mouth down and over Rey now to follow a path he’s tracing first with his hands.

 _“Ben,”_ she can’t help but say again aloud as she bucks her hips, then drives her tailbone into the soft bed they’ve made beneath themselves to arch her back and increase her own pleasure.

Ben knows she wants him in her, but he won’t let it happen yet. He lifts his mouth from her body and looks at Rey, laid out before him as his hands reposition her hips, readying her.

And she stares at him, mouth open and every inch of her yearning. Her eyes pleading with him to fuck her. But he won’t yet.

Ben’s breathing beats out a staccato and he smiles as he teases this for her now, and Rey closes her eyes in agony, nearly breaking his resolve. But it doesn’t. His mouth finds her inner thighs and his hands slip below her buttocks to lift her hips, toward him as his mouth finds her warmth and his tongue slips just below.

Ben hears Rey gasp and she opens further for him as her hands find the back of his head. He feels her bucking again, and his hands steady her before he slips his tongue further inside her, and then lets his whole mouth find her whole sex, gently sucking, tongue circling, hands holding her in place as her body tries to fight her pleasure.

And when he hears her breathing, loud and ragged now, and begins to feel the muscles deeper inside her start to contract, Ben slides two fingers inside Rey as his tongue and mouth continue to lick and suck at her clit.

And she cries out as her hands push him down harder, and her thighs close around him. And yet she opens further as she comes, and her cries echo above them. Through the Caves.

And when Ben feels her slowing down, he gently lifts himself from her, Rey’s weak hands unable to stop him momentarily, as he cleans his mouth and face with a blanket, and then brings his body down, over the top of hers again, lowering his mouth to kiss her. Deeply, as Rey drives her own tongue into Ben now, and wraps her thighs around his hips, bringing his cock closer.

And he knows now he couldn’t fight his own drive to fuck her any more even if he’d wanted to. Ben drives into Rey and she breaks free of his mouth to gasp as she feels his full length breach her. And he pumps himself within her, unable to slow down, and she is gasping below him as he feels the climax, so quickly. He lets his own wave crash over them now, finding her mouth again as he pins her down with his hips and finishes the last of it inside her.

And their mouths brush over each other’s necks, hot breath, as Rey and Ben rock together, slowing down. Finally, he pulls himself out of her and drops his body to hers, spent.

She pushes with her hips, rolls him over and straddles him, nuzzling him with her face and nose. Softly kissing his neck and ears, as she listens to his breathing. Growing softer, deeper, slower.

And Rey looks into Ben’s eyes now. Seeing the flames of the dying fire behind them, reflected across his dark, deep surfaces. His lids are heavy. A sleepy smile playing across his lips as she brings hers to just above his own. Softly biting. Teasing him awake as he tries to drift, his hands on her bare back. Where they started.

“Ben?”

“Mm?”

Rey crinkles her brow slightly, willing the thought into more clarity so as to be able to express it in words Ben can hear. She is troubled.

“On the island... to get here... I needed Master Skywalker’s starship. It was submerged. Under water in the ocean. And so, I had to raise it. I knew what to do. I’d done it before. But this time... it was different. I saw the Darkness. I felt it rise in me. And I fought it. That was my training. But I couldn’t shake it, I couldn’t. And then... I had a vision of you. But you were saying words I’ve only ever  _read_. And then you brought the Darkness to the Light and I felt them both. The balance. And it made me... I felt scared and angry at myself, but then I felt you, Ben, and I felt... “

“Go on,” he urges her, even though it irks him to no end to discuss his fucking uncle yet again.

“When I felt you, as though you were there… that I could somehow touch you… that you were also the ship, and the water, and everything in between… then that’s when I did it. I felt calm. It… quietened me. Even though I still felt the Dark. I was frustrated, distracted, but… I’m here.”

Rey stops and looks at him. And then she says firmly, “I know it’s not...”

When she doesn’t continue, Ben frowns at her. “Not… what? Not  _right_?” 

“The Force must  _never_  be used as a weapon. Only to understand.”

“Rey,” Ben looks at her gently.

He can feel her use of the Force within him, her Light balancing his Dark. Soothing his chaotic feelings and bringing clarity to his head. He lives for these moments he spends with her now, and he doesn’t want to hurt her because of it.

So he chooses the words he now says as carefully as he can. And all the time watching her, sensing her, checking her.

“The words I said in your vision. Where did you read them?”

“In Luke’s tome.”

“ _Skywalker’s_ tome?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see it.”

“I can’t.”

Ben sighs. There is still significant doubt in her.

But Rey knows his thought and so she slips the words to him. She looks deep into his eyes as he hears them. And as she shows him the words, as they appeared on the page she read, she searches him. For understanding. For some sign of recognition.

_I need someone to show me my place in all this._

“There is something, Rey,” he murmurs cautiously, unsure if she’s ready to hear it. “There are…  _other_  Force Orders.”

“What?”

“There are not  _just_  Sith and Jedi. Dark and Light. There are also  _others_. And these others are not… old. Are not… documented. In tomes.  _These_  Orders of the Force are…  _experimental_. And they are all designed… created… to do the same thing.  _To harness the Darkness_.”

Ben feels her body stiffen above him, but she remains silent. Listening. Waiting for more. So he keeps going.

“You have heard of the Knights of Ren?”

“Yes, of course,” she whispers, having always known this conversation would happen between them eventually, and recalling her terrible vision on Takodana. Where she’d first held a lightsaber. Where she’d first seen Kylo Ren.

Sensing her fear, Ben continues slowly, measuring the tone of every word. Keeping it even. Not wanting to panic her.

“The Knighthood has existed for a long time, Rey. Since the Empire. But it was Snoke who harnessed its true capabilities. Who dragged the Knights from their own obscurity and showed them how… useful… they could be. Are.”

“I don’t understand,” she says, slowly.

“The Knighthood is not a foolish Order. Not at all like the Sith. The Knights of Ren are unconcerned with glorious conquests. They are unsympathetic to the First Order. Snoke was the only reason for their alliance with military, government. Politics. And now he’s gone.”

And suddenly, comprehension dawns on Rey.

“You are still in contact with them!” she realizes, alarmed.

“Yes,” he says quietly.

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes. I’m their Master, Rey.”

She gasps.

“They know Snoke’s gone,” he says. “And they’re waiting to see what Hux will do next. They may slip back into obscurity. They may continue to align with the First Order.”

“Their  _Master_?”

“Yes.”

“ _Still_?”

“Yes. But, I’m less and less sure... I feel that... I  _know_... I’ve drifted. Intentionally. Toward you.”

Rey looks horrified. “Is  _that_ what I am?”

“No,” he says firmly. Convincingly.

And she has to check him, to use the Force to feel right though him and make sure there is no block, no attempt to deceive her. She finds none.

“You believe that,” she marvels.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then what  _am_  I?”

“You are… incomparable. I don’t know what  _you_  are.”

Ben stares at her for a moment and then adds, “but there is also something else.”

“Tell me.”

“The trees.”

“ _What?”_

And once again Ben marvels at how very little Rey knows, and yet how incredibly strong with the Force she is. He gazes at her, in awe of her again.

“Ben?”

He blinks. “What?”

“ _Trees_ ,” she prompts.

“Force-trees,” he clarifies.

Ben has sensed the path toward this topic. Hasn’t planned it. Briefly he hesitates. But then he continues, feeling it’s right to say this to Rey now.

“That’s how I tracked you. How I determined your path from Ahch-To. To here. On Ilum. Force-sensitive trees. It’s how Skywalker found the island in the first place. The library was contained in the tree on Ahch-To, which has since been destroyed.”

“But if  _you_  know where Ahch-To is…” Rey begins, horrified.

Although she had left it, she felt that if there ever was again a place she needed to return to, where she could feel safe, where she could think, then the island was it.

“No,” Ben says, and he looks deep into her. “This is not something I have shared. The First Order knows _nothing_  about it.”

Rey stares at him. 

_Why?_

_You already know._

She grins as he closes his eyes.

 

21\. Present. Unknown Regions.

Quick, light, nervous. The heels of his boots clip along the surface of the Destroyer, and Hux races through his key points again.

_Poor decision-making. Sub-standard combat ability. Ineffective command. Ineffective military leadership. Rebel sympathies. Personal interests. Unhinged. Dangerous. Deranged._

_Yes_ , Hux tells himself triumphantly again as he rounds the final corner of the corridor flanking the bridge. And with his chin held high, knowing he is right, he stares with determination at the entrance to the High Command.

_It is time._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! A longer than usual chapter to account for a lot of re-arranging of Chapter 1. Hopefully you can stick with it! And also that the whole thing is now a lot easier to follow post the chronologically re-arrange. Further feedback very welcome and helps me make this better :)


	3. Ilum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben are still in the Ilum system. But as the First Order closes in on them, their relationship is tested and new memories are troubling Rey.

1\. Present. Ilum.

_Ben reaches. There is a Resistance fighter. Not Dameron, older than Dameron. Dameron is a younger man, here. The fighter must be a mentor, Ben decides. He reaches further. There is a First Order fleet ship. Ben recognizes the interior. But it’s dated. He can see star technology he knows is obsolete. He’s still in Dameron’s past. Ben reaches again, trying to move through the history and into the present. To the map. Where is it? But Ben is still stuck in Dameron’s youth. The young Rebel as a boy. And Ben feels his joy, as Dameron climbs higher into the tree. One Ben knows, too. Recognizes. No ordinary tree._

Ben wakes with a start. Blinks sleepily in the darkness as the luminescence of the surrounding crystals begins to detail his surroundings, including the form of Rey. Asleep at his side, warm and soft. In the half-light, he looks down at where their physical edges meet and merge. Her curves snuggled against his angles. He nuzzles her hair and smells her. Sweet and earthy. Reassuring. Stabilising. Comforting.

Ben takes a deep breath. He can sense something different, it has woken him. The First Order. High Command. Something is trying to pull him away. Again. Pulling for his attention.

Ben reaches out with the Force for some time, searching for the source of the feeling that tugs at the back of his mind. The Darkness, always calling to him, never leaving, is drawing him toward a thought. Toward an understanding. Toward knowledge.

As he holds Rey, unable and unwilling to let her go – strengthening and complementing him – finally the thought washes onto the shore of his consciousness.  

 _You need a teacher_.

 

2\. Present. Ilum.

 _She knows this place. But only in dreams. She remembers the golden light, the shape of the trunk, the smooth texture of grass beneath her bare toes. Green. Cool. And then, just like it always does, the smells return to make her gag._ _The bitter scent of ash, as the oxygen from the surrounding air burns up in the spaces around her. The dizzying smell of fuel, as the battered rear of the transport chugs its fumes into her face. And the sour smell of sweat, radiating noxiously from his enormous body as he grips her arm and pulls Rey toward it._

“Yavin 4.”

“What?”

She wakes with a start.

“Rey?”

“What?”

“You said something.”

Rey sits up. The Caves are dark but for the crystals. There is no grass below her, only blankets and rock and the only smells are of water, somewhere off in the distance, and Ben.

“Rey?” he says again, softly.

The night is still drawn around them. The embers of their fire are long extinguished and the cold of the Caves creeps in. The glow emitting in all directions from the crystals overhead illuminates the silhouettes of the shapes their bare bodies make.

Rey realizes now that Ben is awake too. Gazing at her as she tries to regain a bearing. Where she is. The time. She shakes the dream, the sleep and the sex away and remembers. Intimacy.

Rey nuzzles for Ben’s body, seeking its comfort, but as she does she feels his use of the Force in a way she hasn’t felt it in many, many weeks. She looks at him. He is Dark. Something feels very wrong.

“Ben?”

He begins to touch her body. To stroke her skin with his fingertips in a gesture so familiar and yet his eyes call back to a time she barely remembers. His eyes are cold and calculating as one of his hands finds the soft curve of her breast and once again his fingers pull at her nipple, softly, making it hard. Rey inhales a shaky breath.

“Don’t close your eyes. Look at me,” Ben warns her, moving his own body over hers and pinning her below him.

The slightest frown crosses Rey’s face at the tone of his voice and now the memory of that voice comes flooding back to her, as clear as yesterday.

_You know I can take whatever I want?_

Rey doesn’t look away.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he repeats. “Or we’ll need to start again.”

As Ben stares into her, captive beneath him, he lifts his hand from her breast and lets the tips of his fingers trail their way down her torso, flank and belly to her thighs, and then lightly back up to her sex.

“Look at me. Don’t look away.”

Rey breathes hard as he continues. Light touches. Strokes. His eyes never leaving hers and expecting the same. His other hand finds her other breast, nipple. Circling gently, softly pulling it hard, as before. Her chest shudders with every breath. She arches her back and his fingers continue to stroke lightly between her thighs, teasing. Eyes on him, she brings her open mouth toward his.

“Don’t kiss me,” Ben instructs.

He hears Rey breathe out coarsely in frustration. A hot, feverish sound he has to fight but still he pulls his hips to her so that she can feel him harden.

“Don’t look away,” Ben warns her again as she starts to murmur and arch her back against him. He knows she is close to breaking now. Knows she wants him. He enters her with two, then three, then four fingers, his others still pulling at her nipple.

“Don’t look away,” he repeats as he stares her down and she bucks at him with her hips, neck arched and chin high, eyes closing.

“ _Don’t_  do it. Look at me.”

But Ben’s own breath is ragged now and as he feels Rey coming hard around his hand his cock aches for her.

Rey does close her eyes then, as her pleasure takes her away and yet pushes her body closer to Ben’s. She breathes through the wave, deep and long, and then opens her eyes to see him.

And she knows now. She can sense it. No purpose. What she  _wants_  to do.

 

3\. Past. Starkiller Base.

Near darkness. An even darker void below them as they stand together on the narrow catwalk facing each other, within reach of each other. The echoes of their movements are cold and clinical, betraying the truth. The truth of what is now to unfold in front of her. Powerless to stop it. And he says it through tears that are barely concealed. She can feel them still in her own eyes, too.

“I’m being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?”

“Yes. Anything.”

He holds the hilt of the saber out with both hands, like a child with a favorite toy, asking his father to play. Han Solo takes the saber, but the last of the Light is extinguished then in Kylo Ren and Ben runs his own father through as Rey watches, horrified.

 

4\. Present. Ilum.

Astride Ben now, Rey leans forward and finds his ear. Nuzzles the long, dark hair away and, softly, she whispers to him.

“Is it  _this_  that you wanted me to do?”

Rey lifts her face from his ear and looks him square in the eyes, noting their sorrow at the memory she has just replayed. Noting his quietness, stillness, grief, guilt, torment and shock.

“Ben?” she prompts.

Rey’s breathing is deep, his own shallow. Nervous. Disbelieving. Stricken. Feeling too much, he is unable to speak. Ben stares at her, lost. And then Rey feels something else. Something that pulls at her. Gently albeit, but there. Definitely there. The slightest frown crosses her face as she looks into him again. Looks at him now. Not Kylo Ren. _Ben._

“Answer me,” she coaxes. “Or are you too ashamed of it? _Kylo?_ Of killing your own father? Of obeying your true Master?”

Ben blinks back tears now as she stares him down.

“Don’t look away from me. Don’t you dare.”

Ben knows he is beaten. That the girl, Rey, is more powerful than he will ever be. That he is weak, a coward, and a murderer, too, but he can’t help but pull at her heart once again.

“Ben…”

Dark. Shadow. Light. Grey

“ _Ben_ …”

Rey shakes her head to clear it, as though waking from a dream. “Tell me what that was.”

“I led you to the Dark,” he admits quietly, shakily, still weak with emotion and, more specifically, humiliation.

“That’s all, though. What you then did,” and he pauses momentarily, still bringing himself back to the present, “was because of that.”

Ben takes a deep breath now, steadying himself so that he can continue because he knows he owes her an explanation.

“The Dark has always been in you, Rey, but you’ve spent your whole life pushing it down. Taming it so much that you hardly know it exists in you anymore.”

Ben pauses. Rey is quiet. Using the Force, very cautiously he checks her and then he continues to speak.

“But you know it's always been there. Your Light gives you purpose. The Dark doesn’t take that away, it only asks if you’d like another option. Something different, less selfless. The dark is ambition, image, ego. Passion, power, seduction. But the goal, Rey, is the same as the goal of the Light. Control. It’s  _always_  about control. All of it.”

Ben pauses again, checking her. Not wanting a repeat of the attack she just launched.

Rey is still quiet. Her use of the Force is soft on him. She has nestled inside him again, soothing him. Rey is listening.

Ben continues.

“When you went now, to the Dark, you controlled me. And you knew you were stronger. Know it. And you relished it, Rey, you dominated me. Because you know, in your mind, that you can. Impressively, though…”

“Yes?” she asks him, anxious for more.

“You came back,” Ben concludes.

He sighs as suddenly he remembers the present again; her warm body on his, his hands curved around her soft hips.

“ _You_  did that,” Rey says.

“No,” Ben corrects her. “ _You_ did. I pulled you, but that alone cannot return anyone from the Dark side. I know because I’ve spent my whole life trying to get there and to stay there. But my parents. They were  _my_  pull. They wouldn’t let me go, no matter how much I wanted to. And I hated them for it.”

Ben sighs at this.

“ _The Dark side_?”

Rey remembers her own Master now and how afraid he’d been when she’d gone there.

_Straight to the Dark._

“Rey, there  _must_  be something here to pull us back from the Dark or we'd never return,” Ben continues, sensing her confusion and knowing what Skywalker had failed to do for her on the island and wanting to explain it. Wanting to be what Skywalker wouldn’t be to her. Could never be to her.

_The real teacher._

“Why would we?” he continues. “It feels too good to be intoxicated by power. To exist inside its embrace. To bask in the knowledge that we’re all that matter and no one else. And to never care for anything but ourselves because of that. Towers. And that feeling because of it. Of superiority.”

“But I can’t exist like that,” Rey says, disbelieving. “Master Skywalker basically said that to equate power with the Force is vanity…”

Ben spits it out.

“What would  _Skywalker_  know?”

Rey looks scandalized and Ben knows he's hit a nerve. Tears well in her eyes now. 

“I know you hated him.”

“I didn’t  _hate_  him,” Ben retaliates, in defense of himself. “He tried to kill me.”

Tears are running down Rey’s cheeks now as she remembers the throne room, after Snoke. How Ben had told her about his vision of her parents and how she'd felt after that. How he'd sounded.

Ben can read her and his own eyes drop to her cheeks and mouth, watching her hurt unfold.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “Rey, I’m sorry.”

Rey feels all the old self-hatred rise in Ben again as she gazes down at him. Slowly she moves her body closer to his own and gently, unexpectedly, Rey enfolds him in her arms, nuzzles his face with her own. Ben’s arms reach around her again and he lets her soothe him.

“Do you know, Ben,” she breathes, “that you don’t have to lead them anymore? Any of them? If you no longer want to? That there  _is_  more in the galaxy than just the First Order, or the Knights of Ren, even when it seems like all else is gone? Me, for example? Not even Rebels. Just me?”

“You would leave the Resistance?”

“No,” she answers, truthfully.

Her refusal hangs in the air as they lie together. Deep in the Caves, there is no sense of time. As in the annex, it seems to have stopped.

“Ben, I can’t exist like that,” she repeats.

Ben knows it’s true.

“No one can,” he admits. “I couldn’t. I was tearing myself apart. I killed my father because of it. I nearly killed my mother, too. Not even the Sith succeed in that. They survive for a while, but then the natural order of the Dark side replaces them with an Apprentice. I replaced Snoke. Someone else will replace me. It’s just a matter of time.”

“A  _new_  Apprentice..?” Rey looks appalled. “Why are you telling me this?” 

“Because you need to know what the Dark in you is, Rey. What it can make you do. What it  _will_ make you do. And how you can use it. How you can exploit it. How you _could_  use it as effectively as you do the Light. But you cannot push it away, Rey. If you try, you will be feeding a weakness that they will exploit.”

“The Knights of Ren,” she remembers.

“The Knighthood is not by nature a Force Order of destruction and chaos. It’s not the Sith. There’s no reason to turn my - our - backs on it. On them.”

“A  _Dark_  Order? I could  _never_  align with that.”

“You still push it down.”

“ _No, I do not, Ben_. If the Dark is self-interest - passion - then I know _passionately_ in my heart that you may do as you wish but that  _I_  will not align with a Dark Order. That is  _my_  choice. I  _have_  compromised, Ben, and I  _will_ stand with  _you_ but  _never_  with faceless creatures who hide behind masks from their own responsibilities, and the consequences of failing to fulfill them.”

“And you have a choice, do you?”

“ _Always_.”

Rey relaxes slightly now, sitting back on his hips and feeling his warm hands still around her. She takes several deep breaths, turning inward. Reaching out through the Force, she feels Ben but she's searching for something else now. Something she's only recently begun to sense. It's been calling to her in dreams.

Rey leans forward and Ben’s hands find her back, enfolding her. She brushes her face against his broad shoulder. She nuzzles his warm arm, reminding herself of his scent and moving her mouth to his neck, finding his ear. Rey doesn’t want to say what comes next but knows she has to. Knows it’s time to return to purpose.

“I need to go.”

“Because of what I said?”

“No, Ben,” she sighs.

She nuzzles him, kisses him and gazes into both his eyes and heart. “There’s something I have to do.”

“I could help you,” he says, very softly.

Ben’s eyes are so clear, Rey notices. In the light from the crystals above them they appear to her as so many colours now. She could gaze at them forever, if only she had time.

Rey sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe. Fix my lightsaber?”

Ben nods. “And you need a ship.”

“I have one.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “A Star Destroyer.”

_“What?”_

Ben looks at her, longing for her. He nuzzles her nose with his own, wanting nothing more now than to fuck her again but knowing she can read his thoughts he sighs it away and pulls himself back to the present. Back to what Rey needs. What Rey wants.

“Yes,” he says, softly.

“Rey, what do the Resistance have? You know where they are, search it. Even I see it.  _Nothing_. And what can they get where they are? A couple of Wookiee ships? If that? There is not much left on Kashyyyk. Enough to keep them alive, but nothing compared to what the First Order has in terms of resources. Without the resources of a battleship they will track us, and then it will just be a matter of time before..."

_“Us?”_

Ben stops. He looks at her ruefully, wanting to nuzzle her again and let his lips brush her cheek.

Rey searches him. There is conflict but she can also feel his longing to shake it and she can still hear the sound of his voice as he told her of his continued contact with the Knights of Ren. The talk of a new Apprentice. She uses the Force now to search deeper and feel his shame. Sadness, duty, debt, yearning and as well as all that, the smallest spark of hope.

_I can help you._

It's this spark that Rey holds now, using the Force to embrace and turn it up. Ben closes his eyes and she watches as his mouth opens, the feeling growing inside him. She feels his chest rise as he breathes in beneath her and as he exhales he continues, opening his eyes to her now.

“There is nothing left on any Rebel base or outpost,” Ben says, the confidence growing in his voice with every word. “You feel it, too.”

He stops, checking her again. She is still there, listening.

“The First Order has destroyed them,” Ben continues. “Or occupied them for so long now that the tech on them's obsolete. Rey, the Resistance needs what  _they_ have. A ship of its own. With their resources, and equipment to reproduce more. If we can take control of one Star Destroyer…”

Rey gapes at him. _“How?”_

She feels Ben withdraw again from her, turning his attention elsewhere for just the slightest moment.

“Ben,  _what?”_

He shakes his head. “Go to Kashyyyk first. You need to return to them.”

“And you?”

“I could stay here, go elsewhere,” he says, again very softly. “Or join you.”

“ _You,_ go to Kashyyyk, with _me?”_

“Yes,” Ben breathes. Was it so crazy?

Rey’s mind boggles.

“And what if they won’t accept you?”

“Then the Rebellion will die,” he says, bluntly. “The Resistance, the Light. It will be gone, Rey. The First Order are too strong and you know it.”

“They will accept you,” she murmurs.

“How can you be sure?”

Rey brings her mouth to Ben’s to brush her lips over his before finding his neck and then ear.

“Because you will help them,” she breathes again. “You will help  _me_.”

And finally, after what feels like an eternity to Ben, Rey kisses him deeply, pressing her whole body against his and feeling the warmth of it grow with his length. Lifting her hips from him, tracing the path with her hands, Rey’s mouth follows them down Ben’s neck and over his chest. Over his powerful angles.

Rey feels his breath grow heavier and hears him breathe her name as she licks at his stomach and moves her hands to his thighs, feeling his power as he pushes his hips toward her. She brushes her lips along him, closer, feeling the path once more with her hands. Tracing his shaft with her fingers and cupping his balls to tease him further as she hears him say her name again.

“Rey, please,” he begs.

She opens her mouth and takes in the whole of the head of his cock. As she tastes him Ben groans her name. She sucks gently at him before opening her mouth again to take him in deeper and then repeats it over and over again until she feels his hips buck at her from below as he pushes himself deeper inside her mouth, to the back of her throat.

Rey steadies him with her hands, spreading her palms over his pelvis. Feeling the heat and the sweat. Tasting the salt of him. As Ben’s hands find the back of her head, pushing her down, he looks at himself consumed by Rey. Then, arching his head backward, thrusting at her again, he comes in her mouth and she receives him, swallowing him until he's finished.

 

5\. Present. Kashyyyk.

The humid jungle nights had caused the Resistance to build most of their beds off the ground. All but Chewie, whose superstitions about the Black Forest meant he was reluctant to leave its floor. He preferred his ground bed of Wroshyr leaves, citing their talismanic properties. Poe had been skeptical but Chewie knew he kept that to himself out of respect for his Wookiee friend and this was not lost on Chewie. Poe was one of the bravest human pilots Chewie knew, had ever known, and he'd known quite a few now.

As Chewie rolls over, before drifting back into a sleep full of Kashyyyk before the days of the Empire, he catches a glint of light reflected in his new friend’s eyes and Chewie knows that Poe won't sleep tonight, above him in his hammock. Something troubles him. Poe is awake.

 

6\. Present. Ilum.

“There is water here.”

“What?” Ben breathes, still lost in the blissful memory of her soft, warm mouth around his cock.

Rey smiles. “Listen.”

As Ben’s breathing continues to slow he can hear it now, too. They lie together, under the crystal canopy, listening to the sound of a stream trickling somewhere beyond them, deeper inside the Caves.

Rey rests her head on Ben’s chest and feels it rise and fall with each slowing breath, still able to taste him. Her fingers trace his nipple, finding the scar beginning at his chest. The scar she gave him.

Rey wriggles her body slightly so that both her arms can find his shoulders and she gently wraps them around his neck, cheek resting on his upper chest. Sensing him. Listening to his heart and using the Force to feel what it says to her. Feeling her own heart, too. Feeling her own strength growing with Ben’s. Two halves making something whole.

 _No_ , she corrects.

Two wholes making something else.

“Ben?”

“Yes?” he murmurs.

“Can you feel this? Or am I imagining it?”

“What?” Ben’s voice is sleepy.

“Can you feel…” Rey stops. “Doesn’t matter.”

Rey feels Ben shift beneath her. Feels the muscles of his neck and torso contract slightly. Then she feels him relax again.

“Do you mean do I feel stronger? When…”

“…we touch?”

“No. The  _more_ we do. The more contact there is. The more…”

“Yes, and…”

“I can’t concentrate on anything you say,” Ben figures. “I just want to fuck you. All the time.”

Rey lifts her head and laughs. Ben looks at her mouth again. Flicks his gaze up to her eyes, back to her mouth. Runs his hands over her hips, trailing the fingers of one hand up her flank before cupping one of her breasts. Feeling its soft weight with his palm. Rolling his palm, feeling her nipple start to stiffen and then moving his fingers to find it, feeling it harden. Rey arches her back and breathes out.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “This is…”

“Becoming a pattern,” he finishes, as he brushes his lips over the neck she has just lowered toward his mouth.

“Why is that?”

He mumbles it, as he gently pulls at her lobe with his teeth.

“This is a Force nexus.”

Rey sighs deeply at the inconvenience of having a curious mind. Pulling her head away from his mouth, she says with a stupendous amount of disinclination, “A  _what_?”

“A Force nexus,” he repeats, mildly irritated at himself for not having the foresight to predict her line of questioning, which he should have known would follow.

Ben continues to fondle her breast softly as he explains it to her, gently. Enjoying it.

“A place in the galaxy where the Force is strongest. There are more than one. They are scattered in several locations. Here – Ilum – is one. They are usually the sites where Force trees are located, but here is different. I thought you would like it here. With the crystals.”

Rey looks at Ben, feeling his hands on her body as she contemplates his words. Her mind is swimming in questions, so she picks one.

“Where are the others?”

“Ahch-To, Dagobah. And Yavin 4 is another,” he says, as he continues to massage her breast, occasionally flicking her nipple with his index finger. Enjoying the way its colour deepens each time.

Rey frowns. “I know those…”

“Tell me what you know,” he says, starting on her other nipple.

“Master Skywalker wrote about the nexus on Ahch-To in his tome,” she recalls, shooing his hand away now. “Dagobah… Dagobah is one of the purest places in the galaxy…”

Annoyed by her swatting of his hand, Ben scoffs audibly at this suggestion. “ _Pure?_ ”

“Yes,” Rey replies, affronted. “Master Skywalker’s Master, Yoda…”

Ben scoffs again.

“Jedi prejudice. Dagobah is the Dark equivalent of Ahch-To. A Dark nexus to rival… to balance… Ahch-To’s Light.”

Rey pauses, choosing the next words very carefully.

“Did you know, Ben, that when Luke trained me on the island I only ever heard him say your true name.”

Ben scowls at her, his voice growing colder. “Why are you telling me this?”

Very slowly, still monitoring him, Rey leans forward so that her mouth is closer to his again.

“Because, on the island, I still called you Kylo Ren. And I might _still_ be doing it were it not for Luke.”

Rey feels the huge shift in energy just in time to block him as Ben’s anger overtakes everything else in a sudden flash.

But Rey is too quick and knows too much about him now. As she uses the Force to push back, even in his anger Ben knows she has too much control over him and that in fact he needs her to. And just as he chooses to abandon his own attack, she drops hers, already knowing his intention.

Feeling the sudden change from her Ben gasps, partly in shock, as once again – in a moment she might otherwise have had him beaten – she retreats, giving him the opening. To finish her, or choose not to.

Rey’s breath comes in short, shallow bursts, fueled by adrenaline now. Waiting. Ben breathes heavily as they stare at each other, their mouths only centimeters apart. After some time Rey hears his breathing start to slow and sees his eyes begin to soften. They flick to her lips, to her cheeks. Her nose, her neck. His hands relax on her body. His fingers curve around rather than grasp at her. Yielding, not bracing.

Rey speaks first. “Ben?”

He remains silent but Rey continues, determined and driven by purpose.

“I need to tell you something. If you’ll let me.”

Ben looks at her mouth again and she brings it closer to him to let his lips brush over it.

“Say it,” he murmurs.

“On Crait,” she begins in barely a whisper, feeling him tense at the mention of the planet on which she knows he endured nothing but humiliation, “Luke was trying to protect you. To protect us both.  _Please listen_ ,” she repeats as she feels his hands try to push her away.

“I can show you!”

“The tome?”

“ _Yes_.”

“You will show it to me?” Ben tests.

“Yes. Master Skywalker… Luke… he knew that, you and I… we… must discover that our abilities to use the Force are  _complementary_. Ben, Luke’s tome is a testament to the Grey Jedi.  _This is what Luke was_.”

“Bullshit. Grey Jedi are only rumored, Rey, and they are feeble rumors at that.”

“ _Search your feelings and you will sense it.”_

“Snoke hated them. I was trained to hate them, too.”

 _“He has not left you_.”

“Who? Snoke?”

“ _Skywalker_. Luke denied it for his whole life, Ben, choosing to be led by Jedi Masters who’d trained him. And become like them,  _pure of Light_. But in his tome, it’s clear. Even though he was so afraid of it,  _Luke was obsessed with the Darkness_ , and fascinated by the idea that he could somehow bring it to the Light.” 

And now, somewhat uncharacteristically – so used as she is to nutting things out logically first – Rey senses a path.

“What I did on the island to get here, to you,” she realizes. “It has a name, Ben. And Luke knew that name, just as he always knew yours. He understood. How it all worked.  _How we work._  But Luke couldn’t bring himself to practice it. He was not brave enough.”

“A fucking coward.”

Rey ignores him, understanding his contempt and how hard trust is to regain once gone.

“Luke chose to be alone. Chose exile. But…”

Rey touches Ben’s scar with her fingertips, wanting him to understand that this is not meant to hurt him. She reaches into him with the Force and lets him into her in turn.

“Luke knew the purpose of it, Ben. Exile. And Luke knew why he was there, and it was not to die. It was to wait. It was to wait on the island for a girl he knew would come. One day. And he knew that girl would bring him something. An opportunity. To understand how important his own failure was, and with that understanding a new chapter in the Force would begin. And the time of the Grey Jedi would arrive, Ben. With me.  _That is what I am_.”

Ben pushes her roughly from his body and sits up, leaning forward, head bowed, breathing deeply. Unconsciously running his palms over the blankets below himself, not feeling their coarse weave at all but poking his fingers absent-mindedly right through them instead, making rough holes. Escape routes.

Rey sits away from him, a frown crossing her face now, casting it in a doubtful shadow. She watches Ben, wary, as now he stands quietly, walking away from her, searching inside himself, searching the Force. Sensing for signs that what she says is not true. Skeptical. Astonished. Angry. Worn out.

Rey stands now, too. Cautious. Ready. Unsure of what she feels in him, dominated by conflict again and then he slowly turns to face her, his eyes tracing the familiar curves of her body illuminated by the crystals around them, before moving up to her eyes. Understanding their expression. Of faith and sincerity, but also fear.

To Ben, she looks cold and as bitter and resentful as he feels, he knows he can’t leave her there. Cold. Carefully, slowly, he closes the gap between them, moving toward her now and wrapping his arms around her bare body. To warm her. To reassure her. But ultimately to just be close to her again.

And still he can sense something she is keeping from him. And Rey feels this, too. Ben’s recognition of her continued deception. That there is still more she wants him to know, but can’t show him yet.

“Ben,” Rey breathes to him as he holds her. “Maybe choosing sides, allegiances, alignments… maybe, sometimes, we are just too complicated for any of that to be possible…”

Rey doesn’t continue.

Ben pulls his face back slightly so that now he can gaze into her eyes - into her - and as he does he sees his past.

Good Jedi. Evil Sith. Light. Dark. His parents, his uncle, had chosen a side. Had fought for it. They had raised Ben to follow them but Ben had fought his parents, and his uncle, so that the only side left had become the other one. No middle. No middle ground. No room for an alternative view, or a conversation about what else might be possible.

And then there had been Snoke.

And now, here was this girl – Rey – who didn’t care about any of it. Delineations. Orders. Protocols. Ancestries. Wasn’t raised to care. Was just raised to survive and gain truth. To navigate her way, learn things for herself, and choose for herself. The pilot of her own destiny.

How Ben envied her. How he cherished and loved her. And what he would ever do without her, he hated to think.

“No,” he says gently, brushing Rey’s ear with his lips, breathing her scent in again. Feeling it calm and strengthen him.

“You have chosen. It’s time I did, too.”

 

7\. Present. Unknown Regions.

“And where is he now?”

“On the planet Ilum.”

“The resource planet?”

“Correct.”

“With the girl?”

“Correct.”

“The Jedi girl?”

“Correct.”

 

8\. Present. Ilum.

The early morning light casts cool blue shadows in front of them now as they duck beneath the Silencer’s wing. Ben palms a panel to his right and the interior opens to him.

As he enters the ship, Rey watches him disappear from view. She can see the silhouette of Luke’s old X-wing to the west, where she left it, perhaps a quarter mile from where they are now. The darkness of the planet had limited her vision then and she had not noticed Ben’s ship so close by.

Rey realizes now that she'd never thought to ask him how he’d gotten here, her mind too full of why. Purpose. Always purpose.

“Here.”

Rey jumps at the sound of Ben’s voice, caught up in her own thoughts. She takes the weapon from him, noting the fresh solder around its midsection that's repaired the place where the pieces had been broken clean in two by their struggle on the Supremacy.

As Rey turns the weapon over in her hands, feeling its familiar call to her, its weight, she marvels at how little time has actually passed since then. Stepping back, Rey illuminates the saber, feeling its steady hum. And, after some moments, she extinguishes the blue light and clips it to her belt.

“Thank you,” she says to Ben.

“Pay attention to it,” he says. “You’ll need to make your own. This one called you, but I sense you’ll do much better. You need your own weapon, Rey. Don’t forget what I said. Promise me.”

“I promise,” she says, as her hand moves subconsciously to the small bag of crystals nestled safely in her haversack.

Rey steps forward, reaching up to Ben’s face and then around to the nape of his neck. Brushing her lips to his.

Ben kisses Rey deeply and presses his body against her now, feeling new heat for her rise in him. Feeling his breath grow heavier as his hands once again find the familiar curves of her body, beneath her blankets and layers of clothing.

“I have to go,” she breathes, her lips still brushing his own.

“I know,” he murmurs, but he can’t let her go, still unable to entirely block the effects of the nexus.

She reads his thought, feels his struggle and gently pulls his hands away. Brushing his nose with her own as she does, so he knows this is hard for her, too.

“Remind me,” Rey says, softly, as she pulls her face away, “to remind you again of how to fully block that.”

“I was never any good at it,” Ben replies, smiling wryly in return.

Rey longs to touch him again but suddenly, abruptly, intrusively, a shadow crosses through her, and Ben feels it too. They stop and feel it together, as though making sure.

 _Listen_.

 

9\. Present. Unknown Regions.

“And what do you propose we do, General Hux?”

“Ren has one light fighter. A small fleet of TIEs should be more than enough. But heck, let’s send a Dreadnaught. Just for kicks.”

 

10\. Present. Ilum.

Rey runs so fast she hardly feels her feet touch ground as her body hurtles west. Ben is already airborne. She can hear the steely roar of his fighter as it peels east, toward the Dagobah system.

Rey punches the access panel on her borrowed ship’s exterior. Physically forcing the door to open the rest of the way, she jams herself in the pilot seat of Luke’s old X-wing at last. Flicking several switches at once, her deft hands engage the control panel, preparing the old starship for flight.

 _Breathe_ , she reminds herself as she launches it into the icy Ilum atmosphere, gunning it due north.

_Yavin 4._

“Fuck…” she breathes, as the massive form of the Dreadnaught appears suddenly, due east of Ben and rendering him the easiest of targets.

And Rey senses a _very_ different path for herself now. Toward her own escape, in the opposite direction. South toward the Rebels on Kashyyyk and away from this fucking mess.

And yet something stops her. The pull. And she reaches for Ben now through the Force.

 _A ship of its own_.

 

11\. Past. Ilum.

“Breathe,” Rey murmurs as Ben holds her. “Close your eyes.”

Ben obeys, and Rey breathes with him.

“Imagine your extremities. The edges of your fingernails. The very tips of all of your hairs. And draw a line. A line around it all. These are your physical boundaries, Ben. Make the Light touch them.”

 

12\. Present. Ilum System.

Ben reels.  _You have got to be fucking kidding._

_No. Do it._

_“Do what?!”_ he yells aloud at Rey as well as through the Force in exasperation as he pivots his own ship around, torn now between leaving the atmosphere completely and staying below it for cover, with half a mind to arc for an opening in the cave systems and try his luck through the interior gauntlet of crystals.

_Make the Light touch them._

 

13\. Past. Ilum System.

“Imagine the line. Beginning at one place, and ending there, too. This is your boundary, Ben. It is your shield.”

And in his mind Ben could see the same light of his saber flickering around the forms of his body.

“Now,” Rey said, and he could hear the smile in her voice as she sensed he had finally done it.

“Push that to me.”

“ _What?_  Imagine that  _you_  are…?”

“Yes.”

 

14\. Present. Ilum System.

_Push it out._

_“To what?! The ship?!”_

_Yes._

The Dreadnaught fires but Ben has sensed it just in time and pulls up hard.

 _“Fuck!”_ he shouts again, too panicked now to focus his mind on Rey’s instructions anymore, all poise left in him pouring away in great torrents like the last of the melting ice from the ship’s sleek edges, as the ragged path he cuts along the cusp of the atmosphere burns it away in streams of vapor.

And suddenly Ben senses Rey is physically close to him now, can’t see her at first in his viewports but then the bulky form of Skywalker’s obsolete X-wing slices across his left viewer as Rey manoeuvers it underneath, leveling it out to fly just in front of and above him.

 

15\. Past. Ilum System.

“Light. Dark. Balance.”

And when Ben opened his eyes, Rey’s extremities glowed faintly with both her own blue and his red.

“Let me go,” Rey said, her voice betraying her own incredulity that the theory she had only ever read about had actually fucking worked.

“What do you mean?”

Gently, Rey removed Ben’s hands from her body and leaned back from him.

“Make distance. You can still feel me?”

“Yes,” Ben breathes.

“A millimeter. A mile. A light year. And until we choose to break it.”

 

16\. Present. Ilum System.

_I can do this._

As Rey feels herself at the extremities of the Silencer now, she imagines the Dreadnaught too. Pushing out further, astonished and yet believing, Rey extends the line of her own perimeter to include the enormous distance between their still moving starships and the battleship.

_A millimeter. A mile. A light year._

Engrossed in the magnitude of what she must do, Rey’s hand wavers only slightly from its position on the aileron stick, but just sufficient to cause the wings of her borrowed craft to dip to the right. Changing her course for only a second, yet enough at this speed. Enough to cross Ben’s.

 

17\. Present. Ilum System.

Ruing Ren’s last-minute manoeuver, acutely aware of the professional and personal consequences in the regrettable event of a mission failure today, the Commander can feel the second order to strike on the edges of his pursed lips. Can feel the familiar path his laryngeal muscles need to follow so as to extend that movement to his teeth, his tongue, and force his mouth open again, pushing air through his windpipe and creating a sound.

Two syllables to vocalise the instruction once more.

_Fire._

But his body is frozen, as though held in a vice he can’t see. And instead he stares at his crew. Poised and mute. Immobile. Malleable.

 

18\. Present. Ilum System.

And at last Ben can feel what he felt in the Caves, the light of his own saber gilding his edges like solder over flux. And as his breathing continues to slow, bringing with it the clarity of control, true power, Ben pushes it out to the X-wing.

Ben’s own hand is suddenly Rey’s. And together, they steady her as Ben rips the Silencer in an eastbound arc to spiral right, narrowly avoiding impact. And as he evens it out, Ben can feel Rey’s true perimeter now, because it is suddenly also his own. The extremities of the Dreadnaught.

Thunderstruck, Ben looks ahead as the battleship, bathed in light that is both blue and red, slowly turns then vanishes. And as Rey collapses forward, exhausted, Ben re-sets the coordinates on the Silencer now and steers them both through the star system at last. South. To Kashyyyk.

 

19\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Finn tears another piece off the roasted shi-shok. Sure it’s only fruit, but it still beats the hell out of everything the First Order ever served him up.

As he leans back, appreciating the sweet flavor and pleasant, leathery texture, Finn notices something. Blinking, he looks again.

At first, he thinks the sucrose-rich food is making him see things. Shaking his head now, he looks again, just to make sure.

_Nope, still there._

“Hey!” he calls, pointing to where he can now clearly see two moving objects, descending south of the Rebel village. “Do you see that?”

Poe stares for a few moments as the two forms grow steadily larger in the morning sky, but it is Chewie who speaks next.

And when he does, Poe turns sharply to face him, placing a hand on his friend’s hairy shoulder and looking him dead in the eye.

“It’s _whose_  X-wing?”

 

20\. Present. Kashyyyk.

_Quiet, girl._

Suddenly, Ben can see the junk boss in his own mind, too; the source of the sour smell of sweat in his nostrils, still Force-connected to Rey as he lifts her limp body from the cockpit of Skywalker’s X-wing.

Ben holds Rey in his arms and presses her to his chest, his feet planted firmly on the floor of the Black Forest on Kashyyyk. Surrounded by the sweet, pungent smells of the jungle. And as Rey feels the warmth of Ben’s body, she opens her eyes and looks at him.

“Where are we?” Rey whispers, still sounding dazed.

“Kashyyyk,” Ben breathes, tilting his face down closer to hers. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Rey says, her voice growing stronger but still looking to the jungle around them, looking beyond him. Confused and searching for someone who isn’t there. A beast she can see only in her head.  A memory.

“I…”

Ben knows what she wants to say. Knows who she’s seen. And smelled.

“You had the vision again. The one you had on Ilum.”

Ben looks at Rey for a few moments longer as they both remember how she’d woken in the night with a start. And the words she’d spoken return to her tongue.

“Yavin 4,” Rey repeats now.

“Yes,” Ben nods. “Rey, it’s calling you.”

“The ship,” Rey says slowly, now recalling what happened – before she’d passed out – as they’d fled the Ilum system. How their minds had joined, while piloting away from the planet.

And how their powers had then somehow combined to use the Force to turn around the Dreadnaught sanctioned by Hux, sending it back.

Ben watches Rey’s eyes widen at the memory, and the corners of her open mouth begin to rise in a smile that’s both frightened and triumphant.

Smiling back, Ben brings his face closer to Rey’s and brushes his lips against her lower one. She lifts her face to kiss him then, as she continues to remember what happened. Realizes the enormity and significance of what they’ve done. Together.

Ben opens his mouth, moving his lips around Rey’s to slide his tongue between them. Running it along her own and feeling hers push back as she opens wider.

Still holding her in his arms, Ben wants so much to push her up against the starship. To get his hips under her. To get himself underneath her clothes and feel her warmth around his hard cock. And at this thought, he feels Rey’s kiss grow stronger and realizes she can read him.

But instead Ben puts her down and lifts his mouth away so that his cheek comes to rest against hers. They stand there, bodies pressed together, breathing heavily. Smelling each other’s scents mixed with the heady scents of the jungle.

Ben speaks first.

“You need to go to the Yavin system. It’s the only way to understand this. What you keep seeing. I feel it. And you  _know_  it.”

“I need to do  _this_  first,” Rey replies, pulling her face away from him, and looking up into Ben’s eyes.

“But I need your help.”

“Anything,” Ben breathes.

Rey slips from his grasp to briefly disappear inside the X-wing and when she re-emerges she is holding her haversack.

As she kneels down to search the bag, Ben senses it. Senses that the time has come to tell her what he knows.

“Rey?”

“Yeah?” she mutters, distracted by her search.

“There’s something you need to know.”

It was the tone of Ben’s voice, not what he said, that made Rey stop and stand up then, leaving the bag on the damp ground.

“What is it?”

“I’ve seen something,” Ben says. And in his expression, Rey sees urgency.

“What?” she says slowly, quietly, moving closer to him and lifting her hands to his chest, and then his face. Trying to feel with her fingers and palms the emotions she feels from him through the Force. Resolution and earnestness. But not a trace of deceit.

And Rey knows that whatever Ben says next will be the truth. Not just his understanding of it. Not just an impression of events. But the truth.

“Ben?” she whispers, urging him to continue.

“You remember when we met?” he says, drawing her closer. Looking deep into her eyes so she can see everything. Can see every thought. Every image as he tells it.

“In the forest?”

“No,” he says. “On the Base.”

 

21\. Past. Starkiller Base.

As he leaned in, Rey leaned away but it didn’t matter to Ben. He was already inside her. So close, he could smell her fear of Kylo Ren. Could see the sheen of light sweat beginning on her upper arms. At the base of her neck. Ben longed to taste it.

And when he reached further, pouring his gaze over her skin as he did, he felt the emotional pull of Rey’s memory first.

“You’ve been so lonely.”

The memory of her family. And then he saw it.

_No ordinary tree._

 

22\. Present. Kashyyyk.

_“The Base?”_

“Yes,” Ben says softly.

And as he searches her eyes, he sees understanding as she witnesses what he plays her in his head.

“When I interrogated you.”

“I remember,” Rey breathes, recalling her fear.

Recalling her revulsion as she’d first looked upon his true face. Unsure of who that feeling was meant for. Him? Or for herself? For lingering so long on his smooth skin. His dark eyes. His swollen lips.

“What about it?”

“Rey,” he breathes, as he holds her to him now. “I saw something. In you. A memory. An image.”

_“Image?”_

“An image I knew. One I’d already seen. In someone you know.”

“Who?”

“Dameron.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t feel it?”

“ _Feel what?_  Ben, what the fuck are you talking about?”

Ben sighs, frustrated by his failure to put into words what he wants to express. Frustrated by her failure to understand.

In exasperation, he says it angrily. Without meaning to.

 _“You’re connected._  You and Dameron.  _I’ve seen it._  You need to know.”

_“What?”_

“There is a _tree_. In your head, and it’s in his, too. You and Dameron  _know the same place_.  _The same tree_.  _Do you understand?”_

“No!”

“ _Look at me_.”

And Ben grips Rey now by the shoulders with his strong hands and physically shakes her. Impatient. Irritated.

Rey shrinks from Ben at this, but he doesn’t let her go. And she doesn’t break eye contact. Determined not to defer to his attempts to physically dominate her.

“ _I am_ ,” she says. 

And Rey uses the Force to push Ben away and reaching down for her bag she continues her search for the cuffs she’d stolen from Snoke’s throne room.

Now meant for Ben.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I’ve edited this to clean up the chronology (April 2018) but it has made it a little lengthy. I hope the use of the flashback in the second half makes sense and builds the drama rather than just being confusing. Please let me know either way and I’ll work on it more if it’s the latter. I do really love the Grey Jedi ideology for Rey/Ben so I’m going with it. And the combined light Force-ability thing I wanted to include as something symbolic of that. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t? Shattered Empire inspired the Poe/Rey brother/sister connection. Also like the idea that Ben seeing things in both their heads when he interrogates them in TFA brings him some more humanity when he shares that with Rey, trying to help her.


	4. Jakku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey attempts to convince the Rebels to make a radical plan. Ben senses there is more to Rey's relationship with Finn than she has initially let on, and Rey is subsequently forced to admit some uncomfortable truths to Ben.

1\. Past. Jakku.

“Kill them all.”

Finn looked out beyond the sweat-soaked prison of his helmet, at the dark scene unfolding before him against a background of hot flame and haze, and even though the smell of blood that marked his uniform was nauseating he could still smell the villagers’ collective terror through it.

“On my command.”

At Captain Phasma’s words, Finn’s hands automatically lifted his blaster to assume the position he’d been trained by the First Order to adopt in response.

“Fire.”

But as he watched the lasers, blasting left and right of him, he did nothing more than stare through the crosshairs of his helmet. Until it was over. And then it was silent.

And the movement was now peripheral as stormtroopers moved away from the terrible scene. The bright shine of their armor sharply contrasted against the flame-tinged darkness of the desert night.

And a shadow moved then. Finn could see it vaguely until it crossed right in front of him. Directly above the point at which he stood staring, transfixed by the injustice he had just witnessed.

Finn looked up and the shadow came into sharp focus. Kylo Ren. Stood stock still and staring back at him. Motionless. Paused.

 

2\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Rey stands and Ben looks down at her hands, recognizing what he now sees in them.

“Feeling kinky, huh?” Ben quips, looking at the cuffs.

Rey can’t help but smile at this, even though she hasn’t quite forgiven his earlier outburst. Ben’s characteristic loss of self-control.

“ _No_ , actually. Give me your weapon.”

Ben moves his hands to his hips. Rey notes his bare hands but doesn’t comment. Slyly, he makes as though to unfasten his lower garments.

“ _Not_  that one.”

“But are you s _ure_?” he says then and moves forward. Within easy reach of her. His hands creeping softly round her waist.

“They have  _seen us land!_ ” Rey says, but the hint of a smile plays on her lips and she knows Ben can see it. Knows Ben can hear the interest in her voice - the familiar distraction - and can read the thought that now flickers across her mind. 

“They _will_ come here looking for us,” Rey warns again, as she feels Ben’s hands start to unfasten the broad tan belt around her hips.

It drops to the floor of the jungle. Ben fumbles with her outer garments.

“What the _fuck_ …” he murmurs, as the swathes of fabric seem to multiply as he attempts to pull them off her. _“Help_ me…”

Sighing, Rey wriggles deftly out of them and then shakes off the tunic as well so only her underclothes remain on the top half of her body.

Unfastening these, Rey feels Ben wrench her lower garments down below her knees. Then he turns her body round quickly, placing one hand at her hip and the other on her back as he pushes her firmly forward.

Her hand finds the trunk of a Wroshyr tree behind them. She can feel its bark dig into her forearms as she splays them against it, supporting and balancing her. She leans further forward against the tree as Ben strokes first her bare arse from behind with a palm, and then holds her hips as he replaces his palm with his mouth and licks at the soft, warm skin of each of her cheeks. Then he moves both his palms to her hips and runs his tongue up her bare back.

Rey feels her nipples stiffen as a soft, warm breeze wends its way around her body. Her sex longs for Ben as he teases her upper back and then the nape of her neck with his tongue and mouth, heightening her arousal. Ben’s hands slide forward to cup her breasts as his fingers gently squeeze at her nipples, working them softly til they’re hard. She groans and presses her forehead against her forearms again as she arches her back in pleasure. One of his hands leaves one of her breasts and moments later it’s on her hip and trailing around her backside to pause at her inner thigh. He teases there with his fingertips until he hears her groan again.

“Ben,  _please_.”

He slides a finger just inside her and is, as always, astonished by how wet she is and how much she wants him. He slides it deeper and feels her muscles contract around him. Rey pulls her hips away involuntarily in pleasure as her thighs close around Ben’s hand. With his other hand, he circles her waist to pull her back toward him and he slides a second finger inside.

“Oh,  _fuck_ ,” she moans.

Ben loosens the fastenings around his waist to free his cock with one hand, hard as rock and uncomfortably straining against the confines of his clothing. Yearning for Rey as he drinks in this view of her, arse bared and braced against a tree in the middle of the jungle. He pulls her again toward him, taking his hard shaft in his other hand and steering it inside her. They both gasp aloud as he breaches her, feeling the friction together as he enters her from this angle.

Ben pauses to heighten the sensation. To savor the first of his thrusts and then he slowly rocks back and forth inside Rey as he hears her gasp aloud with each entry. Pushing his cock to its hilt, pausing, and then withdrawing it. Slowly. And repeating it over and over. How Ben wishes he could make this last forever. The feeling of their fucking early on.

Rey pushes out from the tree with her palms, extending her arms and turning her head around. Toward Ben. Longing to taste him.

“Faster,” she breathes over her shoulder as she pushes her hips back again, arching her back so he can thrust even deeper inside her. Feeling him pound her now in response to her request and feeling the air being pushed from her lungs with each beat as his pace grows furious in the open air of the jungle.

Rey feels her own pleasure grow as a sweat begins to break out on her brow and across her back as she drops her head in resignation to it, her eyelids wanting to both close in rapture and remain fixed on the floor. On the present.

As Ben bangs her harder and harder, gripping her hips so hard now that she can almost feel the bruises blossom, Rey feels like she can almost take no more. Feels as though she must Force him from her, push him to the ground and straddle him.

But then Ben pulls himself out of her and comes on the jungle floor. Rey hears it hit the ground with a soft spattering, like fat drops of rain as she also hears him gasping as he watches himself come.

After a few moments Rey stands and turns to face Ben who collapses against her, wrapping his arms round her and burying his face in her neck, still breathing heavily. She can feel the sweat across his neck, the heat rising from the sweat-soaked skin beneath his garments.

When Rey presses her lips against the skin of Ben’s neck and opens her mouth, at long last she can taste him. Salt and heat and Ben.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes in her ear. “I couldn’t help it.”

“It’s okay,” Rey returns. “When I’m dressed, I can think of a way you can repay me.”

She pulls her head back from Ben’s neck and nuzzles his face until he looks up, and when their eyes meet she grins at him.

“I love you,” he breathes.

Her breath catches in her throat.

“I know,” she says, quietly.

 

3\. Present. Unknown Regions.

“Well, sir, I suddenly remembered just how deadly Ren is,” the Commander begins. “And I gave the order to abort the mission and return the ship immediately.”

“Please repeat that, Commander,” Hux says. “I have clearly misheard you.”

“Well, sir,” the Commander repeats. “I suddenly remembered just how deadly…”

 _“Enough!”_ shrieks Hux.

And he marches furiously toward the viewport of the bridge and takes several deep breaths before turning around to face the Commander again.

“You have been played for a fool by them both.”

 

4\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“Give me your weapon.”

Ben hands Rey his lightsaber and she clips it to her belt.

“Put your hands out in front of you.”

He obeys and she cuffs him, gently closing the latches and then running her hands up his arms to find his face.

Ben looks down at her, nervous.

“It’ll be okay,” Rey says softly. “No matter what I say, don’t speak. Understand?”

“Yes,” he murmurs.

“And no matter what happens,” she adds, and then pauses to think carefully at first but then something pulls at her and she senses instead. Senses the timing is right. And that it’s true. What she’s about to say.

“Remember that... I love you,” Rey breathes to Ben. “ _Don’t_  forget that.”

And running her fingertips over Ben’s cheeks she brings his mouth down to hers gently and kisses him.

Rey can feel Ben’s fear. Can taste his anxiety. But she can also sense his trust in her as she moves her hands from his face now to grasp his elbow with one, and the weapons clipped to her hip with the other.

And then Rey takes Ben to the last of the Rebellion. Unsure of his fate.

 

5\. Present. Kashyyyk.

In total, there couldn’t be more than twenty of them. The last remaining Rebels in the galaxy, facing him now.

And although Ben’s eyes are fixed on the jungle floor he can feel the acute rage and confusion radiating from Dameron. Can hear the barrage of curses roaring across FN-2187’s mind, interspersed with a mighty sorrow for Rey as she continues to grasp Ben’s elbow. And perhaps, worst of all, cannot bring himself to do more than sense the Wookiee’s rage, lest he unravel completely at the memory of why.

Ben feels Rey’s hand leave his arm now as she unclips their weapons from her belt. Keeping hold of Ben’s saber, Rey hands her own to Dameron. Then Ben hears Rey start to speak and he holds his breath, feeling her use of the Force inside him, somehow keeping him calm.

“This is Ben Solo,” Rey begins shakily, an audible tremor in her voice.

“The son of General Leia Organa and Han Solo…”

Chewie roars at her mention of the name, the great friend he still mourns. Both Poe and Finn grab him, holding him, containing him. But just barely.

In an effort to stop the tremor in her voice Rey tries to raise its volume now, but it persists, betraying her own nervousness.

“Trained as a Knight by the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, and as a Knight of Ren by the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Snoke…”

“Traitor,” Finn spits.

“Let her finish,” Poe says, through gritted teeth.

Rey pauses. Her nervous eyes find those of Finn and, never leaving them, slowly she extends the hand holding Ben’s weapon toward him.

“Please, Finn,” she says to him, quietly. Calmly. “Take it?”

And stepping forward he does, and then Finn’s eyes return to Ben, whose own are still fixed on the jungle floor.

“Coward,” Finn hisses.

“Kylo Ren is gone,” Rey says, bluntly as tears begin to well in her eyes.

“But I know that when you look at him now, you don’t see the difference I do. I know that when you look at him now you still see Kylo Ren, a murderous snake who is the reason our numbers are so few today. A monster. Who tortured, manipulated and murdered people you loved, or tried to torture, manipulate and murder you. And you are not alone,” Rey continues, and her voice cracks now, as tears spill from her eyes.

“These things happened to me, too. I was tortured. I was manipulated. I was nearly murdered at the hands of Kylo Ren but please remember that I have  _not_  brought you him. I have brought you Ben Solo." 

 _"Please_ , Poe, I  _swear_  to you that I have turned him back to the Light. That he has turned his back on the First Order and  _will_  help us restore balance to the galaxy. To atone for everything he has done to you. But first you must  _let_  him."

"Please, Poe. Finn.  _Chewbacca_. _Ben wants to help us._ You have his weapon. You have mine too, I cannot defend him. I give him to you.  _Please_.”

Rey steps forward and kneels before her three friends now.

“ _Please_  tell me what to do with him.  _The way you want this to go_. What he deserves. What you are owed. And I  _will_  accept your decision.”

“Get up,” Poe says, and Rey stands.

“Rey…  _what_?”

“Huh?”

Poe hands the lightsaber back to her.

“Rey, I don’t want this. Take it back.”

Reluctantly, and saying nothing, she obeys and re-clips it to her belt.

“Rey…”

Poe places his palms on her shoulders, gently shaking them loose with his hands and looking at her face. Looking at her worn eyes, at her tear-stained cheeks, and pressing his forehead against her own.

Finally, Poe drops his arms and then walks past Rey to Ben, whose gaze is still fixed on the jungle floor.

“Look at me,” Poe orders, and Ben looks up.

“You remember me, right? Huh, buddy? _Remember me?”_

Ben looks to Rey and she nods.

“Yes,” Ben says. “I remember you, Poe Dameron.”

“Don’t call me that. Alright? I’ll tell you what you can call me, and when you can call me that. Alright? You just say yes or no for now, pal. You got that?  _Have you got that?_ ”

“Yes,” Ben says.

“Alright.”

Poe stops, contemplating his next words carefully. Then, motioning to Rey, he says, “You know who _she_ is, right?”

“Yes.”

“You know who she  _actually_  is, though? Right?”

Ben says nothing.

“I’ll tell you, pal, who she  _actually_  is,” Poe says quietly, his nose inches from Ben’s as he stares up at him, daring him to blink. Daring Ben to look away.

“She’s my _sister_ ,” Poe breathes. “ _That’s_  who _she_ is.”

Rey stares, open-mouthed, at Ben. He had tried to _tell_ her, she realizes now, too late. Had tried to say it first. To _prompt_ her, to physically shake her memory. To remind her of what she already knew.

 _But only in dreams_.

Rey sees Poe walk toward her now and lean in.

“ _What about the Force?”_  Rey hears Poe say under his breath.

“He can use that, right? We got weapons, but I saw what he did on Jakku, Rey. I  _saw_  it. I  _felt_  it. These,” he says, motioning to the lightsabers, “mean  _nothing_  if he can use the Force, right?”

“He can’t,” Rey whispers, her head still elsewhere, and reeling.

_“How do you know?”_

Only half listening, Rey uses the Force to feel for Ben again.

_You didn’t tell me._

_I tried._

_Look at me._

Their eyes lock and Rey notes the honesty she sees in Ben and she feels shame. That she didn’t read him more carefully before. That she didn’t note what was below his surface anger.

“Rey?” she hears Poe say.

“Just  _trust me_ ,” Rey snaps at him.

Poe takes a step back as Rey continues to stare at Ben. 

“Chewie,” Poe says finally, still confused but needing to move on and returning to full voice now.

“Take him to the far northern hut. Finn, back him up. Rey, walk with me.”

Dazed, Rey treks in step with Poe. Chewie leads their motley party of five, bowcaster pressed so hard into the small of Ben’s back that Ben begins to feel it mark a painful hollow as Chewie steers him roughly, further into the makeshift Rebel village. They are followed by Finn, who still holds Ben’s lightsaber. And Poe and Rey walk behind them.

But as the group nears the edge of the impromptu base, and the furthest hut appears on the clearing’s edge, suddenly Poe stretches out an arm in front of Rey, motioning for her to pause. Slightly back from Finn. And out of earshot of Chewie and Ben.

“Rey, are you okay?” he whispers.

“How long have you known?”

Poe looks at her. His sister. He can see it. In her eyes and in the colour of her hair. In the tone of her skin, and in the freckles scattered across it. And as he looks longer, he realizes more of what they share. Mannerisms. Stature. Character.

“Poe?”

The lump forming in Poe’s throat prevents him from speaking then. And so instead he reaches out his arms to Rey and he embraces her like the brother he only senses he is, not yet understanding how. A brother he has never had a chance to be. Until perhaps now.

And Poe feels Rey shudder as she begins to sob in his arms, feeling his emotions and reading his thoughts. Understanding something differently now. Something Ben had said to her.

 _You’re not alone._   

“Rey, I saw something.”

“You  _saw_  something?” she says, pulling away to look at Poe’s face.

“Yes.”

And she senses the answer. Already knows.

“A tree.”

“Yes.” 

“I’ve seen it, too. But only in dreams.”

“Yavin 4,” Poe says.

“Hey!" Finn calls.

Both Rey and Finn jump as the sound of Finn’s voice returns them to the present. To more urgent matters. To what to do with Ben.

Poe moves first, and Rey follows. Hanging back and still nervous. Afraid for Ben. Sensing his growing feelings of distrust for the Rebels.

Poe looks first at Finn, then Chewie, and then again to Rey as they stand together at the entrance to the far northern hut, still only partially constructed.

“Okay. So, what do we do with him?”

Chewie roars and lifts the bowcaster, taking aim.

“I second that,” Finn snarls, setting his jaw and igniting Ben’s saber.

“Rey?” Poe says, above the hum.

Ben’s eyes lift and flick to Rey’s as they both feel the same instinct together. To use the Force. And she can feel him prepare a defense, as she prepares to stop him. But to also protect him.

“I’ve already told you,” Rey says, cautiously. “Poe, this is your choice to make.”

“You still a Rebel?” he tests.

“Of course,” she replies, unflinching.

“Then, no. It isn’t.”

_“What?”_

“Rey, why’d you bring him here?”

“I’ve already told you, I want you to…”

“No,” Poe interrupts, raising his open palm at her in a silencing gesture.

And Poe doesn’t know how, but suddenly he can feel the instincts in Rey. She sees the look of confusion cross his face – understanding it – and Poe pauses before speaking as though hearing a song play inside his own head, and then repeating the lyrics out loud.

“You brought him here to protect him,” Poe says slowly. “And you brought him here to show us something.”

“ _What?”_  says Finn, disbelieving. “Rey,  _this is crazy_ …”

“Finn. It’s not,” Rey appeals, and she moves away from Poe now and to Finn.

“ _Please_  put that away.”

Finn looks at the saber, and then at Rey’s face.

Rey’s eyes have always captivated Finn. In her eyes, Finn had found himself again. The boy he was, before the First Order. The man he was at night, in the dark, and in the seclusion of his own head. Where no one could see as he dreamed of himself as free.

Finn extinguishes the weapon.

“Why not?” he says softly, lost in memories of when they’d first met on Jakku.

As Rey had charged furiously toward Finn with a stick. As she’d reacted with awe when he’d told her he was with the Resistance. And on Takodana, as she’d reminded him he had responsibilities now. That he couldn’t just run away and yet, in the end, had tried. And finally as she’d stayed and continued to fight. Not a coward, like him. Not afraid.

“Finn,” Rey murmurs, as she takes his free hand and softly holds it in her own.

“I remember when you used to  _hate_  that,” Finn mutters, and she smiles at him.

“Me too,” Rey says, fondly.

“You know, you never actually told me how you left the First Order.”

“What?”

“How did you get away?”

“I made a choice,” he says, slowly. “That’s all that matters. That I wasn’t going to kill for them. For  _him_.”

And Finn spits on the ground at Ben’s feet, whose gaze remains downcast. But Rey can feel how present Ben is. Has been, the whole time. Listening to every word and sensing every emotion playing out between the four of them as they’ve discussed his fate.

“Finn,” Rey says, carefully. Very quietly. “Ben has made the same choice.”

Finn stares at her, saying nothing. And sensing a kind of calm beginning, Rey continues.

“Finn, you chose to leave them because you knew what they were. Know it.  _Monsters_.”

“ _He’s_  the monster,” Finn says.

But Rey hears the change in the tone of his voice. Only small. But there.

_A spark of hope._

“Yes,” she says, softly. “Hidden beneath a mask. Afraid of who he really is. Not a monster at all, but a boy, Finn. A man. Afraid.  _Just like you were_.”

“Rey…” Poe starts, but Finn shushes him.

“ _Look at him_ ,” Rey whispers as she motions to Ben so that Poe and Finn turn to face him again.

Only Chewie’s eyes have never left Ben. Still armed. Still aimed.

“He wears no mask,” Rey finishes.

“Where is it?” Finn demands.

“Gone,” Ben says, sensing that the time to be silent is over.

“ _Where_  is it?” Finn repeats, taking a step toward Ben.

“I destroyed it,” Ben admits. “In the elevator. On Snoke’s ship.”

“Why?”

“I was angry.”

“At what?”

“A lot of things.”

“At  _what_?”

“Snoke.”

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Wait,” Poe interrupts.  _“Doesn’t that make you…?”_

“Yes,” Ben admits. “It does.”

Finn takes a step back, fumbling for the saber and making out as though to light it once more.

“Rey, this is  _crazy_ …”

“Finn,  _don’t_ ,” Rey says and she reaches out to grab his wrist as their eyes meet. “You have to trust me.  _You have to trust_   _him_.”

“ _Why?_  Rey, we watched him murder Han! We  _watched_  it! We watched him convince Solo to help him and then run a light sword through his own father!  _This is crazy!”_

Chewie roars again.

“Finn,  _please!”_  Rey cries, and her voice cracks now as she remembers the scene but continues on anyway, knowing she is close.

“There  _is_  a fight, Finn, Chewie, against the First Order that we _can_ win. _And this is it._ The chance to _choose_ to take the side against them. To fight them. You chose that once, too, Finn. Do you remember? And  _Ben_  watched you do it, Finn.  _Do you remember?”_

“Yes,” Finn murmurs, as his now steely gaze meets Ben’s.

And Finn says it softly to Ben. “You didn’t kill me.”

“No, I didn’t,” Ben confirms.

“Why not?” Finn demands again.

Ben sighs. He looks up.

The midday sun glares down suitably as they stand together at the edge of the clearing that the Rebel’s made, only a few weeks ago, in the centre of the Black Forest on Kashyyyk. Behind Ben, that same strong sun, punishing and objective, filters through the foliage of the jungle forest. Light. Dark. And so much in between. Nuanced, and always changing. Shifting with the macro movement of the planet around its orbit, and the micro movement of even the tiniest things upon it, as they all feel the light, and in turn cast their shadows.

And as Ben senses all this, he remembers the days he spent just after Crait. When he would escape to Wild Space and just cruise out into nothing, alone. When he would think about Rey, and about his father. His mother. Skywalker. Snoke. But rarely about himself. What Ben wanted. What Ben yearned for. The anger for the past took up too much room in him. Led him down too many paths of regret, reminding him of his failures.

“Hey!” Finn yells at him.

Ben returns to the present.

 _“Why not?”_  Finn prompts. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because,” Ben whispers. “I envied you.”

_“What?”_

“Nothing. Forget it.”

_“Tell me what you said.”_

“ _I envied you_ ,” Ben spits at him.

And Ben uses the Force to make as though to push Finn back but Rey reads it too early, well ready for it, and instead Ben finds himself flattened against the felled logs of the hut.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Rey warns Ben, “Do that again.”

Poe, Finn and Chewie stare from Rey to Ben, incredulous as he crumples forward, still bound by the cuffs.

Rey uses the Force to unclasp them, suddenly seeing their uselessness in the face of her power. And the shackles fall to the jungle floor with a soft clatter and thud. She walks to Ben and picks them up, returns them to her haversack and reaches for him, tentatively.

“I’m sorry,” she breathes.

But Rey doesn’t dare touch him. Just moves one hand forward, palm facing outward as though sensing a field around Ben’s body that can’t be seen. But that is nonetheless there.

And Ben reaches out to Rey and clasps her hand, bringing it to his face and letting her caress it. Staring into her eyes as she does so as Poe, Finn and Chewie watch. Terrified and mesmerised.  

After some time, Poe speaks.

“And  _if_  we agree to trust him,” he says, slowly, as he watches Rey and Ben.

Rey’s concern for Ben visible but, more importantly, a thing Poe can somehow also sense Rey feels. Fondness. Warmth. Care.

“ _Why_  should we? What’s in it for us?”

Rey has been waiting for this. “You – we – need a ship.”

“We can make ships.”

“You can make  _Wookiee_  ships,” Ben scoffs.

Chewie roars and Rey’s heart hammers as she hears him pull back the bowcaster’s cocking spring.

“Ben, that is _not_  helping,” Rey chides, trying to keep her voice moderate. To keep Ben calm. To keep Chewie calm. “A First Order fleet ship.”

“What in the  _holy fuck_?” Finn exclaims.

“You’re kidding, right?” Poe says. “You  _gotta_  be kidding. Right?”

And Rey and Ben say it together. “No.”

“You two are  _fucking nuts_ ,” Finn exclaims.

“Rey,  _come on_ …” Poe starts.

“It’s possible,” Rey says, and Poe hears the level tone of her voice as he also senses truth. The lack of emotion. The presence of logic. And he knows she is trying to tell them something.

_To show us something._

“Okay, then,” Poe says, as he finally motions for Chewie to lower his weapon.  _“How?”_

Rey looks to Ben first, checking him. And sensing no objection she begins to recount their departure from Ilum, only hours before.

“And it didn’t come back,” she finishes. “Ben can tell you. And then he steered both our ships here. And I only woke up once he’d landed us. He saved me. And when I cuffed him, he didn’t struggle. And then I led him here. To you.”

“So… run that by me again?” Poe says, shaking his head.

“We can control a Dreadnaught. Which means we can obtain one. For you. If you want it,” Ben says.

“You can do  _what?”_  Poe says. “Did you say… a  _Dreadnaught?”_

“Yes,” he confirms. And Rey nods.

“You want to steal  _a Dreadnaught?_ For a bunch of _Rebels?”_  Finn chimes in.

“No,” Ben says carefully, keeping his voice level. And looking now at just Finn. Wishing not to rile him. Remembering something. And suddenly sensing a path. And feeling Rey sense it too. “A Star Destroyer.”

 _“How?”_  says Finn, incredulous.

And as Finn asks he looks at Ben. Addressing his question only to Ben. And this is not lost on Ben. 

Rey feels the smallest smile start to twitch at the corners of her mouth as she listens.

“Rey taught me,” Ben explains, still looking just at Finn. Still keeping his voice soft, the volume low, and his tone even. “A way to combine our powers through the Force. To project a field which makes them stronger.”

No one says anything for several moments. Rey breaks the silence, addressing Poe.

“Ben thinks it should be done from Yavin 4.”

“Why?” Poe says, looking now to Ben.

Rey’s smile spreads.

“Because it’s a First Order outpost.”

“No, it’s not,” says Poe quickly.

“Yes, it is,” counters Ben.

“He’s right,” Finn says quietly.

 _“What?”_ Poe mutters to Finn, not wanting Ben to hear.

“Yeah, he’s right. It is. Ships sometimes go there to re-fuel.”

And Finn goes on to explain.

“The Empire took control of it. After the Battle of Yavin. Rebels have returned to it since then but spies have always known of them. Today, the First Order keeps it monitored. But quietly. I only know because I was nearly sent there. It was nearly my first mission. As a stormtrooper. But then, we went to Jakku.”

“He’s right,” Ben says.

And now Rey beams. Then, realizing that it’s probably completely inappropriate she quashes it, bringing her hand to her mouth to conceal it.

No one speaks then. An awkward silence descends upon the unlikely quintet. A human pilot and a Wookie, both a defected stormtrooper  _and_  a defected Supreme Leader and a Force-using scavenger who – as usual – speaks first in the face of a pregnant pause.

“I think,” Rey starts, “that Ben and Finn should do it.”

 _“What?”_  they say in unison.

Poe smirks.

“I think,” Rey repeats, “That the only two people here who have a chance at this are you two.”

And she motions to Ben and Finn, who stare back blankly.

Rey sighs.

“Look,” and she takes a deep breath, collecting her thoughts quickly before voicing them. No sensing this time, only purpose now.

“ _Think about it._  A whole ship of First Order subordinates. It is one thing to Force-trick one Commander into giving his crew an instruction. It is quite another to convince nearly 50,000 people to evacuate a Star Destroyer while twenty Rebel scum board it. There is only one way.”

“Kill them all,” Ben says.

“Fuck no, Ben, _give them a choice.”_

“Never.”

“Ben,  _we have no option._  You kill them and you are just like the First Order. Once again. Brutal. Unyielding. Didactic. Give them a choice? And you are their champion. Giving them freedom. To join us. Or to return to what they know. Perhaps even to make their own way. Independent.” 

And Rey moves toward Ben now and touches his scar with the side of her palm, mimicking his father’s final gesture.

“It is the only way forward, Ben. And  _I know_ you sense it, too.”

Poe needs a break. Way too much talking, not enough doing. And besides, the afternoon sun is gaining quickly on the horizon now, lengthening the shadows and turning the light around them to a hazy, heat-filled amber. They will all need to eat soon, before the phosfleas begin to appear at dusk. Their bioluminescence signaling the arrival of the night, the imminent blanket of dark. And time for much needed sleep.

“Alright,” Poe says. “I dunno about anyone else, but my head is done for today.”

“Okay,” says Rey. “So… what happens now?”

Poe pauses for a moment, taking in the scene.

“I think,” he begins tentatively, “Rey, you need to watch over… him.”

“Ben?” Rey says.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she says. “So… I stay here with Ben, and watch him?”

“And cuff him.”

“If he needs to be cuffed, then I need his lightsaber.”

Poe pauses, contemplating this.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “Finn.”

Finn returns the weapon to Rey.

“If you need us,” Finn says, “we’ll… be over there. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rey says, smiling gently at him. “I’ll be okay.  _We’ll_  be okay. I promise, Finn.”

“Okay,” he says, slowly. Only half convinced.

“We’ll bring him some food,” Poe says.

Chewie grumbles.

“Thanks,” Rey says, placing her hand on the Wookiee’s shaggy arm. Trying to sense and calm him.

And Chewie does side-eye her then. Cautious. Concerned. Not content but trusting. Remembering how Rey had helped Han on the Falcon. How Han had offered her a job. Had trusted her that much in the end.

Chewie brays at Rey and she beams at him.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

And Chewie notes the tears prickling the corners of Rey’s eyes. They prickle his, too.

Awkwardly, the Rebels turn to leave. To walk back toward the heart of the village. To leave Rey with Ben, at the far northern hut.

“Poe?” she suddenly adds.

“I’ll meet you over there,” Poe says, motioning for Finn and Chewie to go.

“Thanks for this,” she murmurs, once they’re out of earshot.

Poe looks at her. And suddenly he remembers that this day is somehow only the second in his whole life that he has ever laid eyes on his sister.

“Rey. Anything.  _Just don’t fuck up, o_ kay?”

“Okay,” she whispers, hoping like hell it’s true.

 

6\. Past. Starkiller Base.

Saber glowing, casting haloes of magenta light across the snow around his boots, Ben watched Rey approach, the traitor at her side.

Ben’s banter with her would be formality only. A ruse to find an excuse to split them up and remove the traitor, so that in the end it would just be the two of them. Alone.

And Ben knew, as he Forced her from the scene, as she made contact with the trunk of the tree, that the impact had not affected her much. Only enough to knock her out for as long as Kylo Ren needed to kill him. And Kylo had waited too long to do that.

But as Ben watched the traitor then, illuminate a second saber he had no right to wield, Ben’s own, he sensed something unexpected. The traitor’s sense of duty. Loyalty and love. To her. To Rey.

And Ben watched with surprise as Finn began to fight back, not with skilled swordsmanship but with passionate gestures of unbridled revenge. Reckoning for an act committed against a girl, a woman, that this man, Ben realized, loved.

And Ben contemplated this as he felled Finn nonchalantly for the first time in the snow. And as Ben watched with increasing interest as Finn staggered up again, visibly terrified, Ben sensed another instinct in him also. The instinct to die protecting Rey.

And with that thought in his mind, Ben disarmed Finn. He ran him up the spine, felling him for the second time.

And as Ben looked down upon the traitor, incapacitated at last, he knew two things they had in common.

 

7\. Present. Kashyyyk.

The leaf-lined wooden interior of the far northern hut gives off a warm, musky odour. Not unpleasant, but distinct. Above Rey and Ben, the roof is covered only on the most northern end, closest to the canopy of trees at the edge of the jungle. The evening sky is visible through the southern side, and parts of the floor there are damp.

Rey and Ben cover the driest parts with the blankets Rey stole from Ahch-To, making a kind of bed. Having removed his belt and cowl, Ben lies down there now, on his back, and watches Rey as she unfastens her hair.

As the light of the day dissolves slowly, and twilight filters through the gap in the roof, Rey kneels down beside Ben and begins to remove her outer clothes. Making sure to fold and stack them carefully nearby on the driest parts of the floor. Far out of the reach of the jungle rain in case it should start in the night.

Rey brings her body down, now, to the ground beside Ben. First resting on her side, and then nuzzling nearer so that she’s almost directly above him, looking down.

Ben looks up at her face and shoulders, framed by her hair. He feels her warmth, and the soft curves and smooth edges beneath the light underclothing she still wears.

Minutes and more pass by them as slowly thoughts flit between Rey and Ben. And they listen to the jungle soundscape as it changes around them. And the darkness finally falls, and then deepens.

“Tell me about Finn,” Ben says quietly, once the last of the village sounds have ceased, and they are sure the Rebels have bedded down for the night.

He trails his hand across the section of bare flank between her chest and hips, recalling the familiar softness of her skin. Smelling her hair as he nuzzles it with his face. A pleasant breeze has begun to wend its way in.

“What about him?” Rey says softly, as she wriggles further from the blanket, only partially covering their semi-naked bodies anyway. Ben’s skin against her own is so warm, she doesn’t need it, nestled as she is against him.

“How did you meet?”

Rey suspects why Ben’s asking her this but she doesn’t ask the question. And Ben says nothing further. She looks down at him. His expression is closed so she uses the Force to sense him.

“You  _are_ …” she breathes, a coy smile spreading slowly across her face as she props herself higher on her elbow. As though gaining a clearer perspective. A clearer view.

“You’re  _jealous_ …”

“Tell me how you met him,” Ben repeats.

Still smiling, moderately enjoying the idea that Ben is possessive, Rey snuggles back down into his chest once more. But this time she’s closer to his face. Can see his eyes, his expression, as she begins to recount the story of how she’d first met Finn.

“It was on Jakku,” Rey starts, slowly.

Although only weeks have passed, so many things have happened since then. Rey has to search for a few moments, through her memories, to find the right ones now.

“I’d already been to the Concession Stand that day. BB-8 was with me. The droid with the map. Unkar Plutt wanted him. When I said no, he had me followed. I fought them off. And then the droid said there was a thief. It ended up being Finn. He said he was with the Resistance.”

Rey pauses to study Ben’s face. His expression is still closed but his eyes have softened as he’s listened to the sound of her voice.

“And?” Ben prompts.

“We ended up on the Falcon. We ended up with Han.”

Rey feels Ben tense. “How?”

“He over-rid the controls. He was on a freighter with Chewie. Hauling rathtars.”

“ _Fucking_  hell…” Ben shakes his head.  _“_ Fucking idiot. _Why the fuck…”_

He trails off, anger rising in him.

And sensing the start of a downward spiral, Rey trails her fingers over his chest as she continues to speak to him softly, gradually bringing her hand to his cheek. And it works. Slowly, Ben returns his gaze to her face. To her eyes. Returning to the present.

“Han took us to Takodana. To Maz Kanata. Do you know her?”

“Yes,” Ben says, quietly. “I remember her. From a long time ago.”

“That’s when Finn told me. What he really was. Not Resistance. A stormtrooper. And he asked me to run, then. He was afraid. That…”

“I’d find him.”

“Probably, yes. We knew you – they – were coming.”

“What happened then?”

“We went separate ways,” Rey replies, with a faint note of sorrow in her voice. “I had a mission. A responsibility. Finn kept running.”

“But he was still there,” Ben interrupts, suddenly confused. “In the snow, he defended you. I watched him do it.”

“Yes.”

“He was there for you. He fought me. He protected you.”

“Yes,” Rey says. “He did.”

“So,” demands Ben, again. “What happened?”

“Nothing ever happened between me and Finn, Ben. I… Finn was afraid. He  _is_  afraid. Still. Even now.”

Ben looks at her, sensing her. And she lets him, not looking away but allowing him to search her.

“Then what happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you saw him just now, there was more between you,” Ben says, challenging her. Still not satisfied.

“There is more you’re not telling me, Rey. You have seen him since.”

“Yes,” she admits. “I have.”

“When?”

Rey sighs. “After Crait.”

She feels Ben physically tense again as she also feels him inside her head now. But she doesn’t block him. To do that would be to admit to something. To admit there  _is_  something. Or had been.

“Ben, I don’t think it was the same for Finn. But, before I met him, on Jakku, I’d never really had anyone. Anyone I’d called a friend. And when Finn finally told me the truth, I felt we had a bond. Trust. And I didn’t want to leave him. Nothing more.”

Rey continues to let Ben riffle through her head. Searching for a memory, a feeling, that might belie the truth she tells him.

_What happened to you? Did he hurt you?_

“Nothing more, Ben,” Rey says again, with a warning tone.

But Rey lifts her face so that her lips brush his lightly, and Ben brings his own face forward then to kiss her, extending his hand so that it cups her cheek and jaw. And Rey caresses his own face in return. A soft kiss. Tender. Honest.

As Rey begins to kiss him deeply Ben lets her body snake over his. She breaks away to pull her underclothes off roughly. And his hands travel the topography of her bare upper body, finally finding her breasts. Cupping them, his fingers gently pulling at her nipples. Reading her thoughts and knowing how to touch her.

Ben feels her pelvis begin to grind into his own as his cock begins to stiffen. It is his turn to break their kiss now as he arches his neck to take several deep breaths as Rey’s mouth finds his jawline.

Rey licks at him there and then finds his lobe, gently pulling at it with her teeth and then finding his neck again with her mouth, sucking at him. Biting gently as she hears him begin to groan. She can feel how hard he is now and so she lifts herself up and moves her body as though to guide him toward her.

“Turn around,” Ben breathes as he gazes up, captivated.

 

8\. Future. Kashyyyk.

The sounds come first. Delicate as crystal. Soft and fluid. And then the scents follow. Clean and fresh, as though they sparkle. Sound and scent coupled like sight and savor.

If he could drink this water, it would taste like rain fallen from clouds from the cleanest atmosphere. Filtered through pure oxygen and carbon themselves. That clean. That new.

And it  _does_  look it, when first he opens his eyes. When first he sees them. On the other side. Rey first, her eyes averted. And then his father, looking back to Ben from across the stream. From across the flowing water.

Until Ben sees the narrow path it cuts into the ground below his feet. On his side of the bank. Charred and sullied. And feeding itself to the stream.

Ben wants to bend down and touch it. To pull the dirt back. To drive the edge of his hand into the dumb, Dark earth and prevent it from spoiling. It’s _so_  clean. The water. And they believe in him  _so_  much. The Light.

But Ben doesn’t bend. He looks back. And he hears and smells the stream, as he closes his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I’ve edited this to clean up the chronology (April 2018) a bit and minimize time jumps. Hopefully when they’re used they make more sense now! This chapter includes some scene references to TFA in order to build the Ben/Finn relationship. I've had this image in my head for a while of them working together to occupy some kind of massive First Order ship. It might be a rough ride, but maybe it can be done! Also looooved the idea that Ben would be jealous of Finn, so went with that convo between Rey and Ben.


	5. Jakku System

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben spend their first night on Kashyyyk. She reads Luke's tome to him as they try to understand the visions that trouble them. And as Ben mourns Han, Poe puts together the pieces of his own troubled past.

1\. Past. Jakku System.

Poe didn’t look up until he’d reached the end of the gangway, down which the stormtrooper gripping his arm had just led him roughly from Kylo Ren’s shuttle.

Poe could still smell the horrors they’d left on Jakku. The unmistakable scent of burnt flesh was right through his clothes and when he tossed the sweat-soaked hair from his eyes he still felt the ash from the burning village falling from it. Coating the leather on the shoulders of his jacket, like a grave and gruesome snow.

And it happened just before he was led across the cavernous space. As he’d noted it was cavernous. But had already known. Could sense it. But could also remember it.

_I’ve seen this._

Because Poe had been here before.

 

2\. Present Kashyyyk.

Rey twerks slowly above Ben’s hips as the head of his cock presses hard against her entrance, and then skiffs inside her as they both groan from the pleasure of it. Ben gapes at her lower back as he watches it move rhythmically over him. Mesmerized by the rear of Rey as she undulates in silhouette against the darkness. A darkness punctuated in places by the moonlight, filtering through the jungle canopy above them, and spilling over the half-built roof of the far northern hut in the Black Forest of Kashyyyk.

Rey’s palms grip his lower thighs, just above his knees. She leans forward on them as she moves her hips up and along him, controlling her own pleasure as it builds slowly, and feeling him captured beneath her. His body and his gaze. Knowing he couldn’t tear his eyes away from this view of her even if he’d wanted to. And Rey knows he doesn’t want to. Can read the thoughts that drift across his mind. His hard cock. Her soft arse.

Rey closes her eyes and smiles as she hears Ben breathe her name. She imagines his mouth, open. His eyes, transfixed. And his length, made slick from her as she continues to slide slowly along it. And as she feels the muscles around her sex start to close around his shaft, she lifts a hand from one of his thighs and starts to rub her clit, hard.

“Ben,” she moans, as she feels his hips lifting.

“Rey,” he breathes again.

As she hears him say her name, she closes her eyes as the pleasure soaks through her. Her body trembles as she comes above him, tightening her muscles to increase it. She gasps and leans forward, pressing down hard again on his mid thighs with both her hands to feel the wave ripple through her.

Rey tilts her head back and Ben watches her hair, falling loosely across her shoulders and then down her back as she arches it. His hands slip around her, feeling her undulate again but this time into his pliant palms. They caress her bare skin, dampened by the light sweat blushing across it from the actions of their fucking. Their heat. Rey moves with his hands. And Ben feels himself verging as she grinds down on him again.

“Lean forward,” he murmurs.

Rey dips her shoulders and hears the groan escape Ben’s lips as he begins to climax. She feels him push her from him and he watches himself come, as he also watches her arse from behind as slowly she crawls from him. Turning her body to see his face, concentrating hard on the last of his orgasm. And she smiles at him then as their eyes meet at last.

_I love you._

 

3\. Past. Yavin 4.

The red orb rose in the early morning sky. He watched its crest, as it slowly made its steady elevation above the trees, blanketed in mist, which skirted the simple post-and-rail fence he’d helped his father build several summers ago. Around the fragment of tree.

If his father were there with him, he’d say that this sky was a warning. The young man wondered where he was right now. Which system he was in. But the red gas-giant travelled obliviously along its arc, its light tinting the surface of Yavin 4 with an eerie and ominous scarlet hue. Indifferent.

_Red in the morning, Poe._

 

4\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Propped on a forearm, Ben lies on his side above Rey, running one hand over her bare stomach and up her flank to her breast.

“You feel so good,” he breathes. “I can feel it inside me.”

And Ben sighs as he brings his mouth to her neck and kisses it softly. “The Force of the Light.” He brushes his lips over her. “Does that happen to you?” And his fingers gently massage her nipple until he feels it start to stiffen. 

Rey sighs.

“Yes,” she says, and arches her neck and closes her eyes.

“I can feel you inside me, the Force of the Dark, and it feels unstoppable. Like all I want is more of you.” She lifts her body closer to him. “On me and in me, forever.”

He moves down her.

“That’s the balance,” he murmurs before wrapping his mouth around her breast and sucking at it lightly.

“That sounds familiar,” she breathes, her voice quivering as the pleasure of his tongue at her nipple affects her body in a way she struggles to control. 

“Oh?”

And he stops sucking and lifts his face up so he can see hers. And she feels his intrigue.

“Yes,” she says, her breath still faintly ragged. “From the tome.”

Ben is silent for a few moments. Rey grows nervous, remembering the last time they discussed this subject. Remembering his feelings. The anger he still harbored for the Jedi uncle who’d betrayed and humiliated him.

“You still haven’t shown it to me,” Ben says. “But you promised to. Read it to me.”

Rey studies him carefully. Ben’s face is closed, his expression unreadable. She uses the Force to feel him more carefully. She finds the anger, but it is nestled deep within him. Curiosity dominates him now. And the calm which has bathed him since they fucked still clouds his whole mind, shrouding him in a peaceful veil that calms her concerns. 

“Okay,” she says, finally. 

 

5\. Past. Yavin 4.

_Soldier’s warning._

“Please.”

“Cuff him.”

_“Please, don’t take him.”_

He stared at his mother as he was led roughly up the gangway, the stormtrooper gripping his neck after that and preventing him from turning back to look at her one last time.

“Take me instead. _Please don’t take him.”_

But she had to know. He had to make her know.

_I’ll come back for you. You’ll be alright._

And, somehow, he could feel her then, her arms around him and her lips against his forehead.

_No. I’ll find you, Poe._

 

6\. The Tome of the Last Jedi. Kashyyyk.

On Peace, Passion and Control 

A Jedi must control peace in order to contain passion. For if ever a Jedi were to feel both at once then weakness would be demonstrated. That Jedi would have failed to keep the Dark at bay. This is a Jedi’s training. Balance can be achieved when peace and passion merge.

 

7\. Present. Kashyyyk.

 _“And?”_ Ben demands. “Skywalker wouldn’t stop there. There has to be more. Something else... _moralistic_.”

Ben spits out the last word with disdain.

“You’re right,” Rey admits.

“Read it.”

Rey completes the verse for him. 

_“Balance can be achieved when peace and passion merge but a Jedi must never form such an alliance. To do so would bring instability to the Force and in turn breach the Jedi Code. Balance should only be achieved in the Force by the use of Light to control Dark.”_

Rey looks up. “That’s it. That’s the end of the verse.”

Ben scowls. “I thought you said he was a Grey Jedi. There’s nothing Grey in that. It’s more Jedi bullshit.”

Rey sighs and throws him an irksome look.

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t  _all_  bullshit.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“But you’re drawing a very long bow if you think one line makes him a Grey Jedi.”

“I never said he was Grey!”

“You did. Want me to play it back to you?”

“No.”

“You did say that. You were convinced. You convinced _me_.”

“Ben, it’s  _there. This line_ , halfway down about merging peace and passion.”

And Rey points to it as she thrusts the book in Ben's face.

He looks at it.

“The alliance stuff?” he says quietly.

“ _Yes_ ,” she breathes. 

 

8\. Past. Mid Rim.

 _I’ll find you_.

Her words were Poe’s shield against the pain that gripped his slashed face as he gunned the freighter away from the Bright Jewel system. He could see the copper and jade of Ord Mantell as it diminished in his rear viewports, hoping like hell he wouldn’t be followed. But Poe knew no one was coming for him. He’d been meticulous in his planning – it had taken him months.

And Poe had been extra alert that morning. To ensure he tagged in first for test-flying of the repaired Mantellian light freighter. To be double sure to sweet-talk the female stormtrooper who always marshaled the test-fliers during the second moon’s wane. And just before he’d boarded, to alert the Captain to the flashing light on his ankle tag’s battery. And make triple sure the Captain watched him change it, unaware that Poe had sabotaged the holster so the casing could only close partially to emit light from just the diode, and not the wired circuit. The light glowed, but that was it. No current. No tracker. Poe was cloaked. 

The only hiccup had been the mildly inconvenient and last-minute addition of the Savrip armed with a blaster. Who’d have thought the First Order wouldn’t trust a slave from the Outer Rim Territories?

Fortunately, part of Poe's planning had included the acquisition of his own blaster, set to stun. He had disarmed the creature with a relative lack of fuss. The hide of the Savrip had proved challenging at best to penetrate, and it had taken Poe a slash across the face from one of its claw-tipped hands before he’d finally come to his senses and aimed the weapon at its eyes.

Temporarily blinded, it now lay on the floor of the freighter, moaning softly. Poe felt awful about it. When they arrived on Yavin 4 he would free it.

“You’ll like it there, buddy, don’t worry,” Poe called over his shoulder as he punched in coordinates he’d long ago memorized.

 

9\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Ben reads the whole verse again. Then he gently takes the tome from Rey and places it carefully on the floor beside them before returning his body to hers. He begins to kiss lightly the delicate skin behind her ear.

“Well?” Rey says, fighting the slow pulse beginning yet again between her thighs, as she feels Ben's hot mouth on her body once more, and his teeth start to gently tug at her lobe.

“Well what?” he mumbles.

Rey breathes out shakily as she feels him press his cock meaningfully against her hips. “What do you think of it?”

“I’ve already told you,” Ben breathes, as he lifts his mouth away from her ear to find her lips.

Ben begins to suck gently at Rey's lower one, as one of his hands finds its way to the top of her bare thigh.

And Rey actually tries to resist him them. Ben feels it as she uses the Force to gently push him back. Not to throw him from her, just to remind him that she could.

Ben stops. But unable to control the frustration rising in him, he speaks his mind.

“You’re still holding on to it.”

“Holding on to what?” Rey says, warily.

“The Light.”

_“What?”_

“You’re holding on to it. To control.”

“I’m not,” she says.

“You are. Let go.”

And Ben presses himself against her again.

“Relax,” he breathes.

Rey struggles to find the right words, so doesn’t say anything. Instead, she looks into Ben's eyes and uses the Force to show him how she feels.

And there is another slight pause in Ben's actions then and Rey can see a change in his eyes as they soften. As his feelings become more like hers, in empathy for her.

But then Ben dips his mouth and face toward her again and continues on as before, brushing his lips over her and bringing his hand down her flank to start to tease at her inner thigh once more.

“Ben, I _can’t_ ,” Rey says, and she uses the Force to push him back from her a second time, and this time a lot less gently.

 _“Why not?”_ he says, not bothering to hide from his voice the exasperation he feels. His longing for her again, and her stifling of it.

“Ben, I _brought_ you here,” she says firmly.

And their eyes lock.

“I have a responsibility to protect them. To control you. Poe warned me not to fuck it up. And I’m afraid that if I lose control, I will.”

And now Ben understands. “Because you still don’t trust me.”

Rey says nothing.

“Say it. You and I both know it’s true.”

“Yes,” she whispers. “It is. I don’t.”

Ben looks so hurt. Visibly wounded and Rey can feel it in him, too. And hating it, hating herself for making him feel it, she tries to explain it away.

“Ben, I…”

“You didn’t bring me here,” he says softly, antipathy lacing every word.

“What?”

“ _You_ didn’t bring _me_ here,” Ben repeats. “ _I brought you. You_ lost control. On the ship. _Remember?_ You would have died had it not been for me. _I_ brought us here, Rey. I brought us here because _you couldn’t_. _And I made_ _the decision to do that_.”

And Ben pauses then, knowing his words cut her deep and liking it. Liking her guilt. And that at long last he is right. And she knows it.

“Rey, you’re not alone anymore. _Act like it.”_

Rey stares at him as she begins to feel an acute shame. For the way she’s treated him. And she drops her eyes from his then, unable to meet them.

“I owe you,” she mumbles.

Ben melts.

“No, you don’t,” he says, gently.

And then he whispers a truth. One he knows she doesn’t.

“This is what it’s like…”

And he brings his lips to hers and brushes them lightly, so that she lifts her face to his once more and looks at him again. Into his dark eyes.

“…to be in a relationship,” he finishes.

And Rey lets Ben take control of her then, dropping her use of the Force. Abandoning her previous efforts to stymie the heat building between them again and allowing his hands to fondle the contours of her bare body, laid out before him. His lips at her neck. His knees beneath her thighs, supporting and positioning him, and their stomachs pressed together, hips grinding as she feels him harden. 

And Rey also feels Ben all around her, through the Force. And inside her, through the Force. He is everywhere in her mind. In every thought she turns to. And he is Darkness then. And he surrounds them in it. And when he enters her, Rey feels the pleasure of his first breach longer. And she gasps aloud at it, unprepared for how intense it is.

“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers, mouth still at her neck as he kisses and bites at it softly. “Feel the Darkness. Trust me.”

Rey feels herself relax as the tension in her muscles – their initial resistance – is suddenly gone. All she feels now is Ben’s physical body as it works hard on her own. His upper body enfolding her as his powerful shoulders fold themselves in, his knees supporting his pelvis as his hips drive rhythmically.

Rey tilts her head back, eyes closed, and feels his mouth at her neck again and his hot breath on her skin. The sweat creeps over them as his fucking hastens. She wraps her thighs around him, her calves finding his hips and she feels him penetrate her deeper than before as she pulls him closer. Her ankles lock and now she is holding him to her.

 _“Fuck,”_  Ben breathes as Rey feels him straighten his back and pull his face away from her neck to look down on her body as it arcs beneath him.

Rey unlocks her ankles and with the soles of her feet she gently pushes at Ben’s pecs, lifting him slightly so that she can wrap her toes about his neck now.

Ben pulls Rey by the hips, closer, sliding her along her back and closer toward him, so that the curves of her arse press flush against his hips. Her calves rest against his upper chest now. And as his hard cock taps her cervix with every thrust she can at last feel him reaching the very depths of her.

 _“Ben,”_ she can’t help but call out, as the intensity of it is almost painful.

And Rey reaches for her clit and starts to rub with her fingers, the tips of which can feel Ben's slick shaft as it makes its way in and out of her. She looks up at his face, locked on his cock as it fucks her wet cunt.

Rey feels her own climax start to build and the energy from it pull her head back. And she can’t help but close her eyes then as the orgasm takes her away. From the Light. To the Dark.

 

10\. Past. Yavin 4.

Kes Dameron watched as the battered transport landed, against the flaming sky. Behind it, the fleet ship suddenly appeared and he knew then that it wouldn’t be long before the fighters would arrive, too.

_Red in the morning._

Kes gripped his wife’s hand, feeling the hard metal of the improvised ring he’d given her. Appreciating the pain it caused in his knuckle, keeping him grounded. Keeping him present. Making him brave. Like a soldier.

_Until death._

“I love you,” Shara Bey breathed to him. And Kes squeezed her hand as she tucked the slip of paper into the haversack.

 

11\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Rey lies with her cheek, still blushed from their sex, pressed to Ben’s chest as he sleeps. Hearing his heart beat lazily. Not at all like her own, which is brisk as her mind ticks again with a vision she just can’t shake. With words she just can’t quieten.

_The only fight._

Sleep is not possible now. So, gently, Rey lifts Ben's big, placid hands from her body and carefully draws herself out of his embrace. Slowly, she lifts herself up off the floor and silently moves to the corner of the hut, the one containing her belongings.

The haversack rests where Rey left it. Carefully closed on the dry earth underneath her quarterstaff, which is propped in the corner where she’d left it earlier, too, before folding her outer clothes carefully and stacking them.

Rey tucks her hand inside the bag and feels for what she knows she needs now.

Paper. Pen. Ink.

 

12\. Past. Yavin 4.

_We’ll find you._

“Quiet, girl,” he said as he pulled her up the gangway.

Unkar Plutt ignored her cries as he buckled Rey's small frame in, and just before the steely roar that signaled the arrival of the fighters began and with them the aerial assault.

As Plutt searched it, he brushed the embers still clinging to the outside of the singed bag Rey carried, before he took it. Containing her meager possessions and a small, smoldering scrap of paper, on which only three hand-written letters were still legible through the burn marks from the fire, now just a smoldering dot on the planet’s fourth moon as it diminished in the viewports of the transport.

\- r - e - y

 

13\. Diary. Kashyyyk.

I haven’t written in a while.

Ben is asleep.

“The only fight.” 

I keep hearing this.

"Against the Dark side.”

That’s why I’m writing again.

If I write it down, maybe it’ll stop.

If I write it, maybe it’ll make more sense.

 

14\. Past. Yavin system.

“Nearly there, buddy,” Poe breathed to the now placid Savrip as he steered the light freighter below the atmosphere of the fourth moon of Yavin.

Poe knew the way by feel, even though he also knew that a decade had passed since he’d been taken. He’d dreamt of it every night since.

_I’ll come back._

And the feeling began then. But Poe pushed it down.

“You’re gonna love it, buddy, it smells gorgeous,” he called again over his shoulder.

The Savrip snorted, but sat up, sensing a change in the atmosphere and seeing out of his slowly recovering vision the top of a lush green canopy, growing ever larger as Poe guided the ship to land.

And still Poe pushed the feeling down.

_No._

Even as he landed. In the fields he’d used to run in as a boy of twelve.

_No._

And as the door opened slowly, and he heard the airlock unseal itself with a hiss, Poe could fight it no longer as he looked upon the ruins that were once his parents’ home.

_No. No. No._

And he ran to it. The planet had reclaimed it but the foundations were still there. And remnants of the fence. With the ashes of the tree in its centre. They’d destroyed it.

_Red in the morning, Poe._

Poe knelt in the grass then and wept openly. He’d believed so much that one day he would return to them. He’d promised her that he would come home.

 _“No,”_ he sobbed, and he pressed his forehead to the cool, green grass around him, feeling it soothe the cuts across his face and letting his tears water the earth.

“Don’t despair,” a voice called.

At first Poe thought he’d been hearing things. Perhaps this was a vision. Of his parents? He’d heard rumors of mysterious Forces in the galaxy. Abilities that should have been impossible, but which somehow were not.

“Poe,” the voice called again.

Poe turned slowly. “How do you know my name?”

“I’ve been waiting for you. For a long time.”

Poe stood up. Warily, he unclipped the blaster from its holster.

“That’s First Order issue.”

“Yeah, it is,” Poe said warningly.

And he pulled back the safety and aimed it.

“Tell me who you are.”

 

15\. Present. Kashyyyk.

The cool night breeze catches between Rey’s bare toes as she sits cross-legged on the floor of the hut, by its entrance. As she writes, she senses Ben stir. He is restless as he sleeps.

Rey looks up from her work and watches him. Troubled. Vexed. Like a vulptex dreaming. His face and arms twitching. Held, but against his will, as though caught in a trap. Unable to move, but moving.

And Rey feels it first through the Force, before she sees his eyes open. That Ben is awake now. And he looks to her now, as he feels her, too. Her location in the dim light. Her eyes on him. Searching. Probing. Checking. And knowing her question already, reading it in her mind, Ben answers it for her.

_I’m not okay._

Startled, Rey drops everything and crawls across the blankets and leaves that litter the floor of the hut, grazing her knees in places as they brush against uncovered pockets of bare earth and small twigs. And when she reaches Ben, still on her knees, she reaches out to him as she leans over his chest, one arm finding it, and the other his face. Cupping her palm to his right cheek so her thumb can press along its scar. Sensing it already. Knowing what he feels, but wanting to know more.

And Rey uses the Force to push herself inside Ben, to feel his emotions. And then inside his head to see what it is he sees. But she already knows.

 _“Han,”_ Rey breathes.

Ben looks up at her but says nothing, and the hand she has pressed against his chest feels the heart hammering below it.

“Ben?” she whispers, gently.

“I saw him.”

“You saw _Han? How?”_

“I don’t know. There was water. It divided us.”

“Water?”

_Yes. You were there._

_“Me?”_

_But I couldn’t see your eyes._

“Did he speak to you?

_No._

They stare at each other. Rey’s eyes probe Ben’s.

“You feel sad,” she says, slowly. And she gazes into him.

Ben feels the lump rise in his throat again. The one he woke from the dream with. He can’t speak. And Rey can feel it. Gently, she wraps her arms around him and holds him then. Moments and minutes pass by.

“You’re mourning him,” Rey whispers, knowing it fits his behaviour on Crait.

Ben's volcanic resentment of everything connecting him to his father on that day: Luke, the Falcon and herself. Perhaps even why he’d reached out to her just before she’d closed the Falcon’s door on her Force-view of Ben, and after she’d retreated to Ahch-To as she'd tried to let it all die away. To bury their connection as she'd blocked him for as long as she could resist him no more. The pull of his Darkness.

Rey feels Ben grow cold beneath her touch. Unsure of how much of these thoughts he can read. She nuzzles him. A dampness coats the cheek she touches. And she doesn’t need to look at Ben to know that this is grief.

Rey feels Ben start to shake as he tries to contain it. She says nothing. Just holds him as she feels him tighten his grip around her and then relax it. But the shuddering doesn’t stop.

_What does it mean?_

“Tell me everything you saw,” she breathes.

_Water. A stream. Clean. Flowing. And him and you. On the other side of it. He looked at me but said nothing. A stream. Water._

Gently, Rey moves as though to pull herself away from Ben and he relaxes his grip on her then so that she can lift herself up slightly and look at him. Still close. His eyes remaining downcast. But she feels his attention through the Force. Feels his desperation. For understanding. And her opinion.

 _“Water…”_ she begins.

And Ben lifts his gaze slightly, so that the corners of his eyes meet the corners of hers. Cautious and afraid. Adolescent.

“Identity,” she adds.

Slowly, Ben lifts his gaze further and his eyes meet Rey’s.

_What?_

“Water. Fluid. _Like Identity._ In flux. A thing that is… not fixed. That can… change. _Be changed.”_

Ben’s brow furrows. And Rey smiles inside herself. He feels it. It buoys him, keeping his head above an ocean of sorrow.

“Identity,” he murmurs.

 _“Yes,”_ Rey breathes. “What if… this vision… it’s taking you back. _He’s_ taking you back.”

_To what?_

“To the moments when you had a choice.”

_I never had choices._

“Maybe he knows that,” she proffers. “Maybe he feels guilty about it.”

_Guilty?_

_“Yes,”_ she implores. “About what happened. And for not being there for you. When you needed him, but now, Ben… _maybe he is._ Maybe now, he’s trying to _reach_ you.”

Ben contemplates this. There is a truth to what Rey suggests. His father had been largely absent in his boyhood and youth. His mother had, too. But it was Han who had always promised him things. The thrilling adventures. The distant landscapes. The exotic people, quests and conquests.

And there had been times, maybe several, when Ben had flown on the Falcon with his father. To this outpost, or to that race. But Ben could count them on one hand.

In the fifteen years before they'd sent him to Temple Ben could tally the times his father had spent quality time with him on probably just four digits. Maybe five.

“Why him?”

“Huh?”

 _“Why him?”_ Ben repeats. “Why not…?”

“Leia?”

_Yes._

Rey sighs. “I don’t know.”

As Ben holds her to him, feeling for the Darkness in her and wanting to merge it with his own as he lets himself be vulnerable – knowing she is there to take control if he needs it – he wonders why it’s his father, not his mother, who he’s sensing. Who he’s seeing.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he murmurs. “My father never gave two shits about the Force. Why would he start now?”

“Maybe that’s why,” Rey says, pulling her face up to his now and looking deep into his eyes.

“I’ve heard the stories. And I’ve read things. I’m sure you already know them. Why hasn’t somebody contacted us? Are we really doing something _that wrong_?”

 _“Somebody?”_ Ben frowns. “You mean as like… _Force ghosts_?”

_“Yes.”_

“They’re afraid.”

“You sense it?”

“No. I know it. Rey, Jedi are supposed to be celibate. They don’t have intimate relationships and they certainly don’t fuck each other. And if they do, they’re not Jedi. They’re Sith.”

“So, they don’t approve of this. But because Han never cared about any of it to begin with…”

“Something like that.” Ben nuzzles her face with his nose again and somehow works his mouth gently to her neck, brushing it with his lips.

Rey arches involuntarily at the feeling of Ben on her skin, but her mind is ticking.

“I think you’re wrong about Master Skywalker.”

Ben sighs, but continues to kiss lightly at the skin behind her ear.

“Well, of course you fucking do,” he breathes. “So, have you seen them? Either of them?”

“No,” she replies, as Ben pulls his face away to look at her. “But I’ve _sensed_ _him_.”

 _“_ What? _When?”_ Ben had not expected this.

Rey pauses. Ever since they’d arrived on Kashyyyk, she had sensed Luke through the Force. And she feels Ben inside her head as she concedes this, glad that she doesn’t need to say it aloud. But something else occurs to her then, too.

“Do you think you’ll ever see Snoke again?” she whispers, almost afraid to say it aloud. “That he will somehow return to you? _For_ you?”

“Yes,” Ben murmurs.

“Really?”

“I killed him. In anger. He will come for me. There’s no doubt in my mind.”

“Does it frighten you?” Rey breathes.

“Yes.”

“He was so _strong_ ,” she says, softly. Still awed by it.

“Rey, your own power has grown,” Ben says. “Immensely. The Dark in you is stronger now. You are learning how to use it.”

Rey grows silent, contemplating his words. Unsure of how she feels about them. But knowing he is right.

“Ben…?” she murmurs, after a time.

“Mm?”

In the subsequent lull in conversation, he has returned his attention to the skin behind her ear.

“With Force ghosts,” she starts. “How does that work, though? Like, you know…”

“You mean,” he says, amusement in his voice as he pulls his face away again to look at her. “Are they watching us fuck?”

Rey’s uncomfortable expression speaks volumes.

“No, of course not,” he says, grinning. “It’s _sensing_. They _feel_ through the Force. That’s all. In order to manifest, they need a Force-sensitive corporeal person to acknowledge them first, and then, that person has to want to interact with them somehow, by maybe…”

Rey feels her eyelids growing heavy as the deep tones of Ben’s voice lull her. She tries to blink the sleep away.

Ben senses her fatigue and brings his palm to the back of her head, cradling it and coaxing her to his chest. Gratefully, she complies and nestles into the crevice formed by where his shoulder meets it. Nuzzling her nose against his pec.

Rey feels Ben nuzzle her hair in return. Slowly, his breathing calms and sleep takes him. She listens to his breath as she drifts in the space between waking and sleeping.

After a time, Rey feels Ben start to dream again. Feels his hands twitch, and the muscles in his neck and shoulders – his stomach, too – softly move. And then, with a start, he wakes once more. And she lifts her head and looks up at him.

_What did you see?_

 

16\. Past. Kashyyyk.

The same stream. Clean. Flowing. And the dirge that tried to sully it as Ben bent his massive frame toward its bank and drove his palm down to stop it. But he couldn’t. Within reach now, the familiar sounds and scents of the pure water returned to him. And then he felt it. The presence of his father.

“Ben,” Han pleaded. “For galaxy’s sake, take her to Maz.”

 

17\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“I don’t need _anyone_ to take me _anywhere,”_ Rey warns, glowering at Ben. _“I’ll take myself.”_

“Hey, those weren’t _my_ words. Fuck, Rey, _that’s what he said!”_

 _“And why would you think I’d want to hear them?”_ she fumes. “Words said to discuss and determine where _I go_. As though I can’t do that for myself? I’m not a child.”

_Quiet girl._

And suddenly Ben understands. “Rey, I know. That’s not what he meant.”

_“How the fucking hell would you know?”_

“How would I know?”

 _“Yes,”_ she spits.

And Ben’s heart begins to ache as he recognizes the expression that Rey wears now. The one from the forest. And from their Force-connection. When she was still on Ahch-To with Skywalker.

_Monster._

“Rey,” Ben says, quietly. Truthfully. “I’m not doing anything unless you tell me to. I won’t. And I wouldn’t dare.”

 _“Why would he say that?”_ she whispers, as suddenly grief overwhelms her fury and tears begin to well in her eyes.

And Rey remembers it. The memory. It flicks on like a switch. Not just his voice on Jakku, all those years ago, but on another landscape, too. Full of red light. And Ben can see it in her mind, through the Force, as he stares into her eyes and watches, heartbroken, as the tears begin to slide down her cheeks. He hears her voice struggle and choke as she continues to vent the anger she’s been holding on to for so long. For the filthy Unkar Plutt.

_“I hated him.”_

“You _still_ do.”

_“Yes.”_

“But he’s _not here_ ,” Ben breathes to her, trying to soothe and calm her. “Rey, it’s just us now.”

Ben brushes his fingertips lightly across her cheeks to smudge the tears that cling to them.

“And Han,” he adds gently, as he curls around her ears the loose strands of hair which stick to the wet skin of her face in places.

“Who wants to _help_ you,” he finishes. “And that’s _all_ , Rey. No more.”

_Take her to Maz._

“He wants _you_ to help me,” Rey murmurs.

“Yes.”

“He knows.”

“Knows what?”

Rey pauses, looking into Ben and realizing that she hasn’t yet told him any of this.

“I’ve been hearing her voice in my head for weeks. Ever since she said it. I can’t shake it.”

_The only fight. Against the Dark side._

“But… I don’t think the _words_ are important. Ben, I think… what’s important is _her_.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s something she knows. I can sense it. Something more about it.”

“About what?”

“The Darkness. Ben, she had Darth Vader’s lightsaber. _Explain that.”_

An awkward silence hangs between them as Rey searches Ben’s eyes for a sign he knows something to contradict what she’s alluding to.

“You _do_ know something,” she breathes. “I can _sense_ it.”

Ben says nothing in response to this, evading her and desperate to change the subject.

But Rey’s ability to use the Force to penetrate his mind is expert now.

“ _She knows you,”_ Rey murmurs. “Doesn’t she? Not just Kylo. _Ben Solo._ ”

Ben squirms but finally concedes it.

“My father took me there. Once. Before they sent me to Skywalker. She hated me.”

Rey drops her eyes from Ben’s so she can concentrate. Her visions of Maz had begun on the Falcon.

 

18\. Past. Crait.

_Rey._

She palmed it anyway. Ben winced as he felt her leave and she sensed it. And as the door closed she found herself unable to pull her gaze away from where she watched him disappear from her view of him through the Force-connection. Their eyes locked until the door had sealed, and only then did Rey realise that it was too late now for regret. The end had begun. And she had begun it.

_The only fight. Against the Dark side._

Rey had chosen. She was a Rebel. And Maz was right.

 

19\. Past. Takodana.

 _“Ben,”_ his father prompted.

 _“What?”_ he grunted.

Han took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He threw her a look of apology.

“He’s not the galaxy’s greatest communicator, I’ll say that much.”

Ben glared at the table in front of him, lips pursed. Refusing to make eye contact. The tendons in his neck so tense they could snap as he twisted his hands in his lap. Unable to speak.

“Hmm,” Maz added, appraisingly. Weighing the situation. Sensing.

“I _knew_ your grandfather, Ben.”

And at last, to Han’s relief, Ben looked at her.

 

20\. Present. Kashyyyk.

The phosfleas have all disappeared. A grey light is rising. Rey can see the first of it now as she looks out through the hut’s open spaces. In the silence, that has descended around them as their murmured conversation has lulled so she can think, birdsong has started. Morning has arrived on Kashyyyk.

“She _didn’t_ hate you,” Rey says.

“Oh, yes she did.”

“ _No_ ,” Rey reiterates.

“I can _sense_ it. And, I can _see_ it,” she finishes, as now she brings the tips of her fingers to the skin of Ben’s face.

“Maz _worried_ for you.”

 

21\. Past. Takodana.

Han sighed again, unable to keep the frustration from his voice at her mention of a subject that was tetchy between them at best.

“Here we go.”

Maz lifted her hands to adjust her goggles. Ben watched her like a snake. For several minutes, Han watched this continue. But he knew enough about them both to know when to keep his big mouth shut.

Finally, Maz removed the goggles completely and leaned so far forward across the small wooden table between them that she could almost touch him.

Petrified by this idea, Ben still refused to move an inch. He stared her down. But her eyes were soft, worn and wise.

“Child, they haven’t told you _anything_.”

 

22\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Ben’s eyes flick across Rey’s face. He feels her inside his memories, probing and sifting through them. He nuzzles her, unsure of what to say next. And feeling his trepidation, Rey makes a call.

“We’re going there. You and I. Together. We’re going there and we’re talking to her. There’s something she knows. And it’s something _you need_.”

“We can’t leave Kashyyyk.”

“Why the hell not?”

“The First Order is watching.”

“I can’t sense them. They don’t know the Rebellion’s here.”

“Spies, Rey. Would have been sent transmissions by now. There are no clean ships here. Spies will know everything we have, and they’ll be watching.”

“You’re saying we’re _trapped_ here?”

“Yes.”

“We can’t be.”

“Have you sensed a path?”

“No. I’m _thinking_ of one.”

Ben smirks. “Sure.”

“What, you don’t think I can come up with a logical plan?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Shhh, let me _think_ ,” she urges as she sits up now and hugs her knees to her chest.

 _No clean ships_.

“So the transports are definitely out?”

“The First Order watched them leave the Crait system. Along with the Falcon. And they know what you and I have.”

“They know what _you_ have.”

“They know what _you have too_. They watched you leave Ilum in Skywalker’s X-wing.”

 _“Fuck._ Okay, what else? What else is here?”

“Nothing,” Ben says. “Just Wookiee ships.”

Rey raises her eyebrows.

“We are _not_ modifying Wookiee ships.”

“What is it with you and Wookiee ships? What’s wrong with them?”

“Rey, Wookiees don’t make starships. They make stuff out of wood that stays here on the planet. Cannons. Gunners. Stuff like that. And stuff that floats. Land transports and HoverFreighters. But not starships. They don’t have the resources. Rey, _everything here burns_. It can’t get out of the atmosphere.”

 _“Fine,”_ Rey says, annoyed as she realizes he’s right.

“But there’s still a way to get off this planet without being noticed, and I _will_ think of it.”

 

23\. Present. Takodana.

Maz can feel it beginning again.

_Who’s the girl?_

With the butt of her blaster she scratches at the charcoal, flipping the larger remnants over to reveal their warm undersides. With still enough heat to re-spark, if she can catch them early enough.

Dawn is breaking, and as her thoughts turn to her stomach, Maz senses something else. Not just the vision of Han and the girl. But another one, too. Of Han and the boy.

_They haven’t told you anything._

“Hmm,” Maz murmurs, as the first flames rise.

 

24\. Present. Kashyyyk.

The light of the early morning sun has risen somewhere. The section of sky they can see from the hut has already turned from grey to indigo, and now it casts faint, golden shadows across Rey and Ben.

Although she’s hardly slept, the sight of the warming light rouses her. Has always done so, since Jakku. And maybe somewhere else, too. Light fills Rey with purpose.

“Come on,” she says, standing and tugging with both her hands at one of Ben’s arms in an effort to lift his massive form off the floor of the hut. “Help me build a lightsaber.”

“No,” Ben says. “You need to do that yourself.”

But his tone is tender, and he helps her pull him to his feet anyway.

“Fine. How?”

Ben yawns widely, raising his powerful arms above his head and behind his neck, stretching out his broad back, still bare.

“Blade emitter shroud,” he starts, as his brain slowly grinds back into gear. Recalling the steps first, in order to remember all the main parts. “Emitter matrix. Plasma for the blade. Some sort of an activator. And a metal hilt.”

As she reaches for her underclothes, Rey looks at her quarterstaff. It’s metal.

“A saberstaff,” she says, slowly. “I could do that. Right?”

Ben smiles. “The other stuff might have to wait, though.”

“Why?”

“This is Kashyyyk, remember? _Wood_.”

Rey looks at Ben, who is presently naked and searching for his pants. And as amusing a sight as this is to her now, she can feel the irritation he feels at himself. At not being more careful where he’d thrown his clothes last night. So instead of ribbing him further, about his apparent lack of faith in her capacity to handle herself – to craft a rational plan – Rey reaches for her haversack and pulls out a handful of starship detritus. She dumps it at Ben’s feet.

“Where in the fuck did you get all that?” he demands, unable to hide the shock from his voice.

“I stole it,” she says brightly. “From Jakku.”

Ben shakes his head as he finds his pants at last.

“You’re a real kleptomaniac, you know that?”

“I’m _resourceful_ ,” she corrects him, smiling.

 

25\. Past. Yavin 4.

Lor San Tekka clasped the chain around his neck with both hands. The brushed steel of the washer glinted in the warm lunar light of Yavin 4. With a quick flick of his wrists, Lor flipped the chain threaded through it over his head and grasped it firmly, his hand making a protective fist around the precious thing he’d kept for so long.

“Please,” he said, as he stared back at Poe. “I have saved something for you. But you don’t have to take it.”

Poe didn’t move. His blaster was still aimed, although his arm shook terribly, still affected by the strong emotions which continued to course through his body.

“I will leave it here,” Lor continued. “In the grass for you. But only if you want it, Poe.”

And Lor bent his aging frame to the ground and gently laid the necklace there. Then he straightened again, waited, and dropped his gaze from Poe’s, beginning to retreat. He’d done what he’d waited to do. What he’d known she would have wanted.

“What is it?” Poe said, and Lor paused as Poe added, “Bring it here.”

Slowly, Lor bent for a second time to reclaim the keepsake. And just as slowly he walked to Poe.

“Hold it out,” Poe breathed, eyes still fixed on the curious man, who obeyed.

Poe’s eyes flicked quickly between the thing held in the man’s hand, and his face.

_I’ll find you, Poe._

_“What is it?”_ he whispered.

“It was your mother’s,” Lor said, gently. “This may begin to make things right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Is it too time-jumpy or does it work?
> 
> I was listening to a lot of Rowland S Howard while writing this one. 'Autoluminescent' makes for a great Ben Solo anthem - work was super busy and boring and I just felt like indulging in sad Ben for awhile ;) Was also really missing Poe as a character in this story so wanted to write a bit of a backstory that is again inspired by mentions of him in Shattered Empire but I'd also watched TLJ again and remembered that scene when Rey and Poe are Force-connected (he is on the ship with Leia asleep and when Rey screams as Snoke tortures her in the throne room he wakes and runs to the window of the ship and reaches out to her - totally Force-connected!) And I'd come across the ring Poe wears around his neck in a copy of the TLJ visual dictionary, so thought I would write something on that in order to introduce Shara Bey. And just can't help myself but write really smutty Rey/Ben sex scenes ;)


	6. Kashyyyk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey and Ben follow their instincts on a cloaked transport to Takodana as Poe accepts the truth about their relationship.

1\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“I think it’s all here,” Rey says thoughtfully, as she kneels down and sifts through the parts with her fingers.

“ _Plasma_ , though…”

“Not on Kashyyyk,” Ben says plainly.

Rey frowns at him.

“Maybe Chewie knows of something on…”

Her voice trails away as a new thought occurs to her.

 _She’s got it where it counts_.

 

2\. Past. Mid Rim.

 _I can fix that_.

The warning tones had begun, but Rey had already sensed the coolant leaking. She reached up to pull open the access panel on her left and tried to clear the billowing smoke. As she felt intuitively with her fingers for the wiring she could see in her mind, she blocked the chaotic sounds of Finn’s struggle to patch up Chewie. And Han’s rising panic, as she sensed rather than heard his warning. Rey knew the cause of this problem. As her nimble fingers twirled the last bits of cable, and wrenched the remnants of the compressor from its position in the Falcon’s electrics – completing the bypass – she saw the tech.

 

3\. Present. Kashyyyk.

 _“The Falcon…”_ she murmurs.

“What about it?”

“The Falcon has a cloaking device.”

“ _What?_ It can’t have,” Ben rubbishes, unconvinced.

“Ben, I _saw_ it.”

“No ship that small has a cloaking device.”

 _“Holy shit,”_ she breathes as she stares at him, completely ignoring his characteristic skepticism. “If we can modify the transport with that…”

Ben raises an eyebrow, uncertain but listening. “We can… what?”

“Ensure a clean ship,” she finishes.

“You can’t _ensure_ that,” he parries again. “It’s still a monitored transport, and the First Order can run de-cloaking scans.”

“ _We have to try._ Unless you have a better idea?”

Ben says nothing as he zips his boots.

Already dressed, Rey watches him fasten the wide belt around his cowl with his bare hands. Her eyes flick to the gloves, still on the floor where he’d left them last night. She looks at Ben expectantly. But the gaze he returns her is steady. And with her mind still on his deliberately bare hands, Rey remembers.

“I have to cuff you,” she breathes.

Ben smiles wryly, extending his wrists.

“Forget it,” she murmurs, as she moves toward him, taking his outstretched hands and guiding them round her waist as she reaches her own up to his face, feeling him pull her close and press his hips to her. She closes her eyes and smiles, as her muscles remember how to feel in response to the touch of his mouth at her neck.

Rey feels Ben’s hands reach underneath her outer clothes to find the skin of her flank and stomach and continue up. Beneath her underclothes, to find the skin of one breast. As he brings his mouth to hers, she feels him start to gently work her nipple with practised fingers. She arches her upper body in response to the pleasure of it. He is gently coaxing Rey back inside the hut, and she is letting him, unable to resist his advances again. And unwilling. The pull of his Dark is too good. And to indulge her own Dark is too tempting, and blissful.

As Rey’s back finds the wall, Ben slides his hand down toward her hips. She feels him slide further beneath the gussets of both layers of her lower clothing. He is feeling for her sex as his mouth finds her neck again. She closes her eyes as his fingers move shrewdly between her thighs.

Ben hears Rey sigh and breathe his name as he enters her with two fingers. She is so wet and warm and he wants her around more than just his hand then. But he fights it as he repositions his fingers so his thumb can also reach her clit. And he starts to work at her firmly as he feels her muscles start to push against him. Her climax is building.

With his other hand, Ben lifts her thigh and Rey wraps it around his hip, half-straddling him to let him work his way deeper inside her with his fingers, but to also let his hip support the weight of her body as she starts to lose control of it. Suddenly tipping her head back and feeling the contours of the felled logs of the wall he has her pushed up against. Pressing the crown of her head hard against them.

And Rey’s body wakes to the orgasm he’s built for her. Eyes closed in rapture, she feels Ben’s hand at her jaw and he is cajoling her face to his. She feels his mouth on her own, and she sinks her tongue into it.

Ben feels Rey inside his mouth. Running her tongue under his. He jams his hips hard against her and feels the air escape her lungs in response.

Rey twists her mouth away from Ben’s and gasps for air as his hands pull roughly at the front of her lower garments, exposing her sex further as he moves to lift her thigh higher round his hip. His cock aches. With one hand, Ben fumbles for it as his mouth finds her neck and he tastes the sweat beading on her skin.

“Ben,” she gasps. _Stop_.

He slows, but for his racing heart and the heaving of his chest, which he can’t do anything about as his muscles scream for oxygen.

Rey feels Ben slow and then still. And she catches her breath at last, tilting her head back again and gulping in air that her body craves. She feels his face at her cheek.

Ben pulls his own cheek back just enough to be able to look into her eyes in the dim light of the hut, although outside it’s now day, and the sun is up.

_Did I hurt you?_

“No,” Rey whispers, still breathing heavily. “No.”

“Are you sure?” Ben checks, his voice still ragged as he nuzzles her face.

“You couldn’t,” she breathes.

Rey drops her head to his shoulder then and he softens his grip on her thigh, although he doesn’t let it go.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” she says, as she feels her pulse slowing and nuzzles him.

“I just…”

“Yes?” he breathes, troubled and nuzzling her in return. Sensing the conflict in her.

“There’s stuff I need to do, Ben,” Rey says, and she turns her face so her eyes can meet his more fully.

Ben inhales a ragged breath and then releases it, the sigh shaking from his body as with a mighty effort he begins to pull his thirst for her back. To tame his cock. To listen to what she wants. He breathes in deeply again. Slowly, his mind is returning and his body is calming but he knows that passion still rules him. He drops his head to Rey’s shoulder and breathes out. And with that air he pushes energy.

Ben enters Rey then. It’s a familiar sensation, like a plunge – an almost crude shove, raw around its edges – as he uses the Force to reach inside her and eventually nestle there.

And in turn, in a habit that’s somehow formed between them in moments when they’re alone – established at first implicitly, but by now understood and expected – Rey uses the Force to push her own energy back and inside Ben, but much less feverishly than him. Her entry is smooth, measured and controlled.

Ben lifts his head and sighs as he feels Rey inside him. He lowers his head again to nuzzle her hair before bending his knees and pushing himself beneath her, to move her chest higher up his torso. Rey’s feet leave the ground and she wraps both legs now around his hips as he moves his hands to her thighs and holds her there. Between his body and the wall of the hut. But he doesn’t fuck her. Just holds her and feels what it’s like to balance their opposing energies, as they press their bodies close, and breathe.

“Are you hungry?” Rey murmurs, after a time.

The thought that drifts across Ben’s mind in response to Rey’s question reaches her and she arches against him, feeling his soft lips brush against the skin behind her ear.

“Not quite what I meant,” she says softly, but Ben can hear the smile in her voice and the ragged note returning to her breath.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I am.”

“I’ll go get us something.”

Rey reaches a hand to Ben’s face and coaxes it from her neck, bringing his lips to hers briefly and then, with her other hand, pushes gently at his chest so she can see his eyes.

And although Rey can still feel the emotions inside him, Ben’s gaze reveals a looming Darkness that frightens her and has nothing to do with sex.

But somehow Rey knows that Ben doesn’t yet sense it there.

She frowns.

“What is it?” Ben says.

“Nothing.”

But he does sense her lie.

 

4\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Breakfast sure smells good to Chewie. Wasaka-berry pudding garnished with rillrrnnn. He likes preparing food. It’s relaxing. To wake at birdsong and gather ingredients. Native stuff that he knows how to cook, and that reminds him of his past. His heritage. And to then spend time – the first hours of the day – just prepping and cooking. It’s meditative. Intuitive. He can say things with food. Important things. Like how much he believes in the Resistance. How much he cares about it. How glad he is that Rey is back. She reminds him of Han.

Chewie doesn’t need to think while he cooks, either. Like about how bad it is that she’s brought the boy with her. Because Chewie can already feel it. And it’s because he’s here, in the Black Forest. Knows the magic in this place. Its power to cloak them if they need it, but to reveal the things they also need. And this is one of those things.

Ben Solo will betray them.

As Chewie senses it again, he looks down at Poe and brays at him softly.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Poe answers, indicating his food. “Thanks, buddy.”

But in truth, Poe’s mouth feels like sand and nothing he puts in it tastes like anything but rankweed. He hasn’t slept well, and this is fast becoming a norm. Hunched over his knees as he sits, and feeling groggy, Poe chews his food dully as he stares at the fire’s glowing embers. Swallowing the last of it, he casts the wooden bowl aside and absentmindedly feels for the chain around his neck.

_Yavin 4._

“Seen Rey?”

Chewie mumbles a response, pauses, and then adds to it. Poe straightens up and looks at him.

“I know,” he says, quietly. “I don’t trust him either.”

Movement catches their eyes then as Rey emerges from the north of the plain.

“Smells good,” she says as she nears them, looking hungrily for the source of the warm scent, making her salivate.

Chewie points to the two bowls of pudding. Rey smiles in gratitude and turns to Poe, and she can’t help but notice the dark rings beginning to shadow the skin below his eyes. He’s definitely looked better.

“Are you okay?” she asks, concerned.

“I didn’t sleep,” he groans, as he rubs his temples.

“It’s this place,” she says in response, as she crouches down next to him, placing one hand gently on his shoulder.

Chewie grumbles and Rey looks up quickly, apologetic.

“I’m sorry,” she offers, attempting to placate him. “But I _sense_ it. And Chewie, you _know_ it. The Black Forest is haunted. We cannot stay here long.”

Rey stands.

“Please,” she continues cautiously, sensing the moderately bruised ego in Chewie. “I need your help.”

Chewie looks down at Rey.

“Plasma… Do you know where I can find some here?”

For several moments, Chewie considers what she’s asked for. He knows Han would have helped her in a heartbeat, and he wants to do the same but can’t shake the feeling that gnaws at his gut. He brays at Rey. She sighs.

“Chewie, _I understand_. I really do. There are times when I doubt my trust in Ben, too. It happens when I _think_ about it too much. But then, there are other times when I _feel_ differently. When I _sense_ that Ben’s heart is true. That, Chewie, Ben’s heart is _like Han’s_. And that heart is _not_ deceiving me. _I know it._ And,” she finishes, placing her hand on his shaggy arm in an effort to calm his concerns even further, “it’s _not_ deceiving _us_ either.”

Rey pauses then and uses the Force to reach out to him, and what she finds in the Wookiee intrigues her.

“Have you _seen_ something?” she breathes, removing her hand in surprise.

Chewie moans softly, shaking his head.

Rey nods, and with another sigh acknowledges the truth.

“I know I can’t change your mind, Chewie, if you really don’t want it changed. But please, I need your help. Without it, I can’t sense another way forward, and I certainly can’t think of one. I need the plasma to make a new saber. One of my own. But also,” she adds sheepishly, “I need a cloaking device. And I’ve seen one on the Falcon.”

“ _What?”_ Poe says.

“But it’s not a ship we can take.”

“ _Take?_ Hold on,” he says, standing now and turning to face her. “When you say _we_ …”

“Ben and I,” she says quietly.

“You’re _leaving?_ ”

“Not for long,” she adds quickly. “And only for Takodana.”

_“What in the hell for?”_

“I can’t tell you.”

“Oh, _yes you can_ ,” Poe says, as he takes a step forward. “And you are _not_ leaving this planet with him until you do.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

“What?”

“ _I said_ , you’re not the boss of me.”

“Look,” Poe levels, wearily. “I feel like shit, Rey. I’ve had pretty much _no_ _fucking sleep_ , okay? I am _not_ about to get into a stupid argument with you. _Got that?”_

“Got it.”

“Just tell me _why_ , Rey. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking for. _Why in the hell_ would you go to _Takodana_ before _Yavin_?”

“You have to _promise_ _me_ that you will _not_ hang shit on what I say, Poe. _Either of you_.”

And as she points with intent to Chewie as well, they both notice then that one of her hands is closed. Rey is hiding something.

“Do you know Maz Kanata?” she says briskly. The sun is rising higher. She is running out of time.

“Yes,” Poe replies, frowning.

“She _knows_ something. I sense it. Ben _needs_ to see her. And I can’t do the rest of it on my own. If he isn’t okay, we can’t even _get_ to the Yavin system, let alone do all the stuff that needs to come after that in order to follow the plan.”

“What do you mean, _if he isn’t okay?_ ”

“Remember, _you_ _promised_.”

_“What the hell’s wrong with him, Rey?”_

She hesitates.

“He’s sad,” Rey mutters, suddenly aware of how lame it sounds when she says it out loud.

“Oh really, _he’s_ _sad?”_ Poe thunders, almost with laughter at such a claim.

Chewie roars too, his outrage at this statement plain as day.

“ _You promised_ ,” Rey reminds them both, hissing through clenched teeth.

Several minutes pass until at last Poe speaks. And his answer surprises Rey.

“Alright, fine. Go.”

Rey hugs him so hard he’s sure he hears something crack. Then she does the same to Chewie, who grumbles. But it’s a good grumble.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she murmurs as she pulls herself away, beaming at them both.

But then Chewie brays again, Rey’s face falls, and Poe senses why.

“Rey, _what the hell?”_

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she says, as at last she unclasps her hand to reveal the cloaking device she’s been concealing within it.

“It just made more sense to take it before,” she says plainly. “When I was over there anyway. I _hoped_ you wouldn’t mind, I was going to tell you. I was.”

“ _Just don’t fuck up_ ,” he reminds her, trying hard to fight the grin threatening to break across his face at her sheer gall.

Armed with two bowls of food and a cloaking device Rey walks briskly back across the plain to the far northern hut and to Ben. The sooner they’re off Kashyyyk, the sooner whatever is pulling him to Takodana will be resolved. And the sooner they can reach the Yavin system.

Only then can they initiate their occupation of a First Order fleet ship, which will provide the Resistance with enough resources to last them for two years, during which they can continue to acquire more resources, and begin to convince the old allies that the Rebellion is not finished yet. Or something like that.

But even in the short-term, their tiny group of Rebel fighters will be finally free of this cursed place. The ill-feeling it’s steeped in. Rey knows that the longer they stay here, the more it will affect them. Their judgement. Poe’s judgement. Rey feels him waning here. Sees it.

 _The saber can wait_ , she thinks. _There’s still time for that._

But every moment they now spend here matters. They have to move fast. And as she enters the hut in a pragmatic frenzy, speaking aloud to Ben and reaching for her belongings, she senses it.

“Chewie’s agreed to look for the…”

And then she feels it crash around her, in a sickening collision of her belief in him and their doubt.

_Fuck._

Ben is gone.

 

5\. Present. Kashyyyk.

In the depths of the dense jungle, a breeze lifts the leaves of the Wroshyrs, but does little to lift the steamy fog that’s settling in again below their branches. It’s a curious feeling to stand among it and feel the moisture in the air, collecting upon the skin of his face. His bare hands.

Ben remembers the feeling of rain upon his gloves when Rey was on Ahch-To, and they were Force-connected. It was cold then, even with gloves. He recalls the feeling on his skin of their stiff, unyielding leather, now lying abandoned on the floor of the hut. He longs to forget them.

_To let the past die._

And to only remember the feeling of his bare hands on hers.

 

6\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Finn emerges, still shirtless and shaking the last of the water from his hair.

“What the hell just happened?” he says, watching as Rey disappears into the distance, the sound of her voice still an echo in his ears.

Grabbing his shirt and jacket, which he’d earlier slung over one of the felled logs circling the fire, Finn makes out as though to follow her.

“Don’t,” Poe warns, grabbing his forearm gently.

“What? Why not? Where’s she going?”

 

7\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Ben stretches out his wan fingers and relives the sensation, of Rey touching her fingertips to his in the heat of the annex on Jakku. Recalling the warmth of her soft skin. And how gentle her touch had been then, even though she’d been afraid of him. Was she still?

Ben drops to one knee and bows his head. Softly, he presses the tips of his fingers to the floor of the jungle, feeling its warmth and moisture, reminding him of Rey. He closes his eyes and imagines her as his jaw relaxes. He feels his breathing slow.

Ben inhales through his nose to sense the dampness in the air and the sweet, intoxicating perfume it distils from the bark of the trees. He can taste the damp and the scent on his tongue as his lips part. He inhales now through his mouth, slowly holding the air of the planet in his lungs, and then – just as slowly – letting it escape him. Opening his eyes to sense it leaving his body, and tension with it. It is blissful here.

_Ben._

With Rey.

Ben closes his eyes again. He can sense her. She’s anxious. Rising slowly, he reaches out through the Force until he feels her. Much closer than he’d imagined.

“I thought you’d left,” Rey scolds.

“Still here,” Ben says, softly.

 

8\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Chewie looks uncomfortably at the floor before sitting down and pretending he has something to clean up after breakfast.

Finn stares from him to Poe, and then back again.

“What the hell’s going on?”

Chewie mumbles a response, and Finn rounds on him.

“She’s doing _what?”_

 

9\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Rey approaches Ben slowly. He can feel her hesitation. She’s wary of him. And he senses her instinct to keep him at a distance, but she wants an explanation so he gives her one.

“When you left, to go to them, I sensed something,” Ben begins. “I’ve felt it before. It’s been calling me.”

 _“Dagobah?”_ she breathes, watching warily as his eyes – although soft – darken unmistakably.

“No,” he murmurs, as he takes a careful step toward her. Not wanting to frighten her but longing to hold her. “Takodana.”

Rey can feel it again as she stands within reach of Ben now. The looming Darkness she sensed around him as they’d held each other earlier in the hut. And although it troubles her, she pushes it from her mind.

“We need to go,” Rey says, intentionally ending the trance she feels descending around her in response to the way Ben is looking at her, and the soft tones of his voice. Lulling her back to his arms, and already knowing from experience where that will end them.

No closer to Yavin.

“Come on,” Rey urges, as abruptly she turns and leads Ben further north. To the transport.

 

10\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“Look,” Poe says quickly, trying to calm Finn. “They’re not gonna be long…”

“ _What?!”_ he bellows, horrified by what Poe has just implied. _“_ Poe, _he’ll kill_ _her_.”

“No,” Poe says, placing his hands sympathetically on the shoulders of his friend. And with regret filling his eyes. Wishing it weren’t true. But unable to keep it to himself any longer. Having already sensed it in Kylo Ren. And just now feeling the same thing in Rey, too.

“Finn,” Poe concedes. “He loves her.”

 

11\. Present. Kashyyyk / Mytaranor Sector

“Hand me _that_ ,” Rey directs.

“Conductor shield?”

“No, _the tape_.”

Ben lobs it to her.

As Rey completes the installation of the cloaking device, she sighs with relief and leans back on her haunches. She begins to manually close the panel’s rivets with the butt of her closed fist, having been unable to find a rivet gun anywhere; the transport was so dated that not even the Falcon had tools old enough to maintain it, and so Rey had improvised instead. The gun was probably still on Crait.

“When we finally get a fleet ship, I guess we can farewell all this ancient tech,” she finishes thankfully. “That’ll be weird, though. I’m so used to all this mechanical stuff.”

“There’s still mecha on First Order ships, just not so much,” Ben says, wondering why she hasn’t just used a droid as he watches her blow air on her smarting hand, reddened by the blows she’s given with it to the rivets. “Are you okay?”

‘Not really,’ she replies, wringing her hand now. “But it’s fine. I’m used to it.”

Rey smiles and stands up. “Let’s go.”

“You’re the pilot?”

“Of course,” Rey replies with a grin, having already located the position, and started to set coordinates for the Tashtor sector, and Takodana. “Is that okay?”

The drive engines come to life, elevating the transport above the trees of Kashyyyk.

“Yeah,” Ben says, vaguely, his mind still on what she’d said earlier. And done.

“What was scavenging like?” he asks, abruptly changing the subject and following the train of his thought.

“Huh?”

“Scavenging,” Ben repeats. “It must’ve been hard.”

Rey pulls her attention away from the viewport’s glimpse of the shrinking planet, and looks quickly at Ben, intrigued.

“Why?” she asks, genuinely interested in his answer.

Ben shrugs. Rey can almost hear his brain tick as he tries to locate the source of the thought. His motivation for asking.

“Just wondering, I guess… Did you ever fuck up? Like, hurt yourself? You know, from pulling stuff apart all the time. With your bare hands?”

“Yeah, of course,” Rey admits. “Who wouldn’t?”

Ben stares through the co-pilot’s side viewport, watching as the Kashyyyk atmosphere deepens in colour. A sign he knows means that the transport has entered the star system.

“Atmosphere’s clear,” Ben informs her, as he stares again at his ungloved hands. Turning them over. Noticing the texture of his skin. The lack of callouses.

“Thanks,” Rey says, looking at him curiously.

She considers pushing the point. Enquiring about the gloves. But she stuffs it down. It can wait. And instead, Rey returns both she and Ben to purpose.

“Determine destination co-ordinates.”

“So, did you have medic droids?” Ben asks, as he turns his attention from his hands to the console and begins to punch buttons.

Rey snorts.

“Fuck no. There was never _anything_ like _that_ on Jakku,” she says, as she watches Ben fruitlessly enter course data now, attempting to prepare the transport for the jump to lightspeed.

Realising fairly quickly that he’s having no luck, Rey begins to help him set and re-set it, but grows increasingly frustrated as plot after plot is declined. The transport is bulky. This sure isn’t the Falcon.

“I just used to put up with it,” she finishes, as finally the hyperdrive motivator accepts a program. “Everyone did. That’s just what happens, when you’re a slave.”

As the transport rockets forward along the course they’ve just about killed themselves to establish, and the pressure and gravity inside the hull equalise, Ben moves to one of the passenger bays along the starboard side of the ship. He removes the lightsaber from his hip and begins to study its external composition, analysing the exposed circuitry but still listening to Rey’s recollections of the Western Regions.

And Rey senses the thought as it blossoms in him. Alarmed, but also enthralled.

 _“Ben,”_ she begins, frowning. “ _You_ don’t need an army to take a planet like Jakku.”

Rey stands and walks to him, able to leave the pilot position now that the ship is steering itself. She sits down beside him on the bench.

Ben looks at her, and Rey sees and feels the anger in him. Anger for what she’s endured.

“You _are_ a weapon, Ben,” she breathes, placing her hand on his thigh.

He stares at her.

“Wow,” Ben responds, smiling ruefully and benching the weapon. “You _are_ Grey.”

Rey stares back, knowing what she’s said. Knowing how it sounds. But this time not afraid. This time incited, but only at first. And only until she feels the familiar pull of not the Force, but her conscience. 

_There is one in our hearts._

“Jakku has nothing to do with the war against the First Order,” Rey says, coming to her senses.

“Jakku has _everything_ to do with it,” Ben counters, pulling her back. _“Why do you think you were taken there?”_

“What?”

“Forget it,” Ben says, suddenly aware he’s said too much.

 _“What, Ben?”_ Rey repeats, sensing now.

And Ben knows he has begun it. He can feel Rey inside him, starting to search for it. And he knows she will find it eventually, now that she’s actively probing his head, and no matter how hard he works to resist her; he has never been able to block her.

Hesitantly, Ben shows it to Rey. His memory of her mother.

 

12\. Past. Yavin 4.

Indigo topped the sky. Beneath it, the red of the planet coloured the fourth moon’s horizon with a hue like a bruise. From sepia through to salmon. The green of the planet was shocking against it.

From the end of the Falcon’s gangway, Ben looked out at the view with the kind of wonder that only a small boy could. He liked it here. The red glow that tinted everything was hypnotizing.

“Get over here,” his father growled. “We need your help, Ben.”

As he stepped out from the shadows of the Falcon’s underbelly, the ship that made his father happy, Ben remembered the words of his uncle.

_I’d like it if the other one found a good home._

Ben stared up at the people who lived here. He recognized the woman. She wore her hair like other pilots he’d seen assigned to his mother’s missions; in a sequence of loops down the crown of her head. A man held her hand. Ben didn’t know him.

But Bey smiled kindly down at Ben, recognizing him, too. And Ben smiled back.

 

13\. Present. Mid Rim.

_Open your eyes, damnit._

Ben can feel the devastation in Rey, but can’t bring himself to look at it, written as it is all over her face. He can sense it. He touches her hand, which is still on his thigh. Although Rey is shattered, she hasn’t withdrawn it.

“I didn’t know it was there,” he breathes candidly, opening his eyes to look at her. To try to make her see the truth. “Rey, I…”

“She did my hair like hers,” Rey tries to grasp, in a voice so small Ben hardly recognizes it. A voice that seems to ask him why, and as though he could answer as confidently as he could all her other questions about the ways of the Force.

Ben watches the tears spilling down Rey’s face, reminding him of the terrible sight of her on Ahch-To when she’d confronted him about his father.

_Your parents loved you, they gave a damn about you._

“I don’t understand,” she murmurs. “Why did you keep it from me?”

“I didn’t remember it then.”

 _“Liar,”_ she hisses, utterly unconvinced. “ _How_ could you possibly _not_ have remembered that?”

“Rey, please,” Ben urges. “You don’t understand it.”

_“Understand what?”_

Ben withdraws his hand and stands up. He strides to the hull of the transport and stares ahead angrily as the stars of the Mid Rim continue to streak by them at lightspeed.

Rey stands, too, and follows him.

“Ben,” she says, doggedly. _“Understand what?”_

“Snoke,” he concedes, dropping his head before turning to face her, but unable to quite meet her gaze.

Rey takes a small step toward him, her heart in her mouth.

_“What about him?”_

Rey can feel the anxiety deepening in Ben. The paralysis she’s felt in him before – the one that cripples his ability to speak thoughts and feelings. She closes the last of the physical gap between them and puts her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his and feeling him pull her in to his own in response.

Ben feels Rey shake as she tries to contain her emotions, in order to contain his. And as he feels her energy move inside him, he pushes his own inside her in return. Feeling the sorrow and anguish in her more acutely.

“Snoke concealed it,” Ben whispers, drawing his head back from Rey’s hair so he can look in her eyes and make her see the truth. “And planted something else in its place.”

Rey gapes at him, tears still clinging to her cheeks, but Ben can feel her emotions shifting. Her sorrow is lessening, and something much stronger is rising in Rey. Anger. And Darkness.

 _“Tell me,”_ she says, menacingly.

“It was a lie, Rey. That he knew I would try to use to turn you. Because he knew, then.”

“Knew _what?”_

Ben concedes it, his voice barely a murmur.

_Not strong enough to hide it from you._

“That I loved you.”

The electronic warble of the hyperdrive motivator sounds, signaling the end of the hyperspace jump. Instinctively, they both turn to face the console and the viewport. The transport starts to slow, and the stars become streaks before returning to fixed points. They have arrived in the Tashtor sector.

“Check the cloak,” Rey instructs, wrenching her mind back to the present. It would not do to have it blow out now, not when they’d come this far.

Settling back into pilot position, Rey’s keen eyes recognise the viridian glow of the distant Takodana, and she begins to manually steer the transport toward it.

Ben leans over the console.

“Still up,” he says, and then he turns his face down and toward her. “Rey…”

“ _Don’t._ Not now.”

Frustrated, Ben turns angrily and strides to the rear of the transport.

And as hard as Rey is trying to focus on keeping the awkward form of the ship just above the fast approaching planet’s atmosphere – searching for the entry coordinates she remembers Han using weeks ago to enter it – it’s impossible to fully block her perceptions of Ben. His hurt. And the ferocious regret overcoming him now at his inability to manage it alone.

Rey hears the saber ignite.

“Don’t even think about it!” she yells at him over her shoulder as she finds the right plot at last, dipping the transport through the atmosphere and plummeting toward the surface. Attempting to minimize the time the ship will spend visible from the ground, Just in case spies are watching. And just in case they are scanning for cloaks with First Order star tech.

“It is _very_ likely that this ship is our only way off this planet. I _swear_ , Ben, if you fuck it up with that thing I will _not_ forgive you.”

Rey hears it deactivate and instead Ben hurls the weapon at the wall, as he hurls himself down on the bench seat, breathing hard.

“For _fuck’s sake_ ,” Rey says under her breath, as she activates the drive engines and the transport begins the final part of its horizontal descent to the forested surface of Takodana.

When it lands, Rey releases the exhaust vents and cuts the engines. As she stands, she checks the status of the cloaking device. It seems to have survived. The diode still shows blue for active. She powers it down and then releases the hatch, just before she powers down the rest of the auxiliaries. Once they’ve left the ship, they can close the hatch from the exterior access panel, which should still have enough residual power left in it for such a maneuver.

Satisfied with the condition of the ship, Rey turns her attention now to Ben. She can still hear him breathing out coarsely, against the ambient sounds of the transport cooling. She approaches him tentatively, and carefully sits down beside him again.

Ben stirs but doesn’t look up. Hunched forward, his elbows rest on his thighs and his head is bowed.

“Ben?” Rey murmurs.

He sits back and leans his head against the wall behind the bench, eyes closed.

“Are you okay?” she says softly.

In a worn gesture, Ben rolls the back of his head against the wall before opening his eyes to look at her.

Rey reaches out a cautious hand. She strokes his cheek, and then the tips of her fingers find his lips. Carefully, she brings her face closer to his until her mouth is millimeters from his own.

Ben drops his eyes to it and lifts his head from the wall, bringing his own mouth closer to hers until he can brush his lips against her. After some time, he closes them over her lower one, sucking at it gently to taste her. Sweet, metallic and warm.

At first Rey returns his kiss, feeling Ben’s growing urgency, and recognising it also in herself. But then his revelation returns to her. It drifts across her mind like a cloud over sun, shadowing her drive for him then, and she slows.

Ben feels it. He pulls his mouth back from hers and nuzzles her cheek with his nose.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes.

“You’re not to blame,” Rey says, leaning back and bringing her knees to her chest. With the power now down, the air in the transport is growing cold.

Ben pulls her legs across his hips and with one hand he draws her head to his chest, the other following a path below her knees to wrap itself under them and pull her whole body in closer. He breathes in the scent of her hair as he presses his lips to it.

“Ben, tell me the truth.”

Rey lifts her head off his chest and out from under his chin. She looks at his eyes. They are troubled but soft.

“Did you know my parents?” she breathes.

“Your mother was a pilot for mine,” Ben says.

“A _pilot?”_

“I met her. When my mother took me with her. On a diplomatic mission. Once, when I was small.”

Rey recalls Ben’s memory, its imagery still fresh in her head. The low vantage point. The primitive way he had read the emotions of the people in the world around him, and interpreted the meanings of the words they had said. The simplistic way he’d read his father. The shallow way he’d read her mother. 

“But _this_ memory,” Rey presses, confused. “This was _not that_.”

“No,” Ben admits.

_“Why were you there?”_

“Do you know the stories? About the Battle of Endor? The end of the Empire? And what the Jedi thought they’d done to it?”

Rey pushes aside his usual contempt for the Jedi. A disgust she can feel underpinning his questions. Instead, she focuses on the facts he includes.

“The Battle of Endor. It ended the war.”

“No,” Ben sighs. “The war has never ended, Rey. After the Battle of Endor, Imperials and Jedi continued to fight. What was important then – why I was there – was because of my father. He smuggled for the Jedi one of the trees that was stolen from the Empire after the Battle. He helped bring it to Yavin 4.”

“Force-trees…” Rey murmurs, starting to piece the fragments together.

“Yes.”

“Stolen by who?”

“Skywalker,” Ben says, and again Rey ignores the triumph lacing his voice.

“And,” he adds. “Your mother.”

“Ben, that is a low blow.”

“It’s not a blow.”

“It is, Ben. _Fuck._ _Take it back.”_  

Ben looks at her for several moments, reflecting on what he’s said, and how he’s said it. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He’d only wanted to tell her the truth as he knew it. As he understood it. And he tries to explain it differently now, fighting the anxiety rising inside him at his usual inability to articulate what he really wished he could say.

“Rey,” Ben tries to start softly. “It _is true_ that Skywalker and your mother – and _my father_ – brought one of the trees to Yavin 4. And that they took them from the Empire.”

“And where in the fuck did the Empire get Force-trees from?”

Ben is silent.

“ _I’ll tell you where_ ,” Rey snarls. “The trees were stolen from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It is _documented_ , Ben. I’ve _read_ it. So _don’t_ give me any more of that shit about Jedi stealing things, or implying that my family – or _your father_ – were doing anything but fighting back against the Empire.”

“They’re all fighting back, Rey,” Ben says wearily, understanding her disdain for his words. “And they’re all still doing it. The Jedi. The Empire. The Rebellion. The First Order. The war will never be over. Because they all do the same thing. The all fight _for the sake of the fight_.”

Ben’s words echo through the cold air of the transport. Rey shivers.

Ben pulls Rey closer to him, cradling her head and coaxing it to his chest. Wanting to warm her.

And although Rey still feels angered, she lets him. Snuggling her face against the warmth of him. Breathing in the soothingly familiar scent of his cowl and below that, the intoxicating scent of his skin.

“You’re so _warm_ ,” she breathes, after a time.

With her energy nestled inside him still, Rey feels Ben’s heart expand. And as she feels her own heart expand with it, she also feels the onset of the trance that had begun around her earlier on Kashyyyk. When she’d found Ben alone in the jungle.

But this time, Rey wants him. This time she’s ready.

Ben nuzzles her hair again with his face before standing and lifting her with him. And he walks to the blankets she’d thrown down earlier in the back of the transport, as they’d left the Wookiee planet. He shifts her haversack from them sideways with his boot and lays her down there. Brushing aside with his hands the lightsaber tech that’s spilled from within it.

Rey begins to pull her outer garments roughly from her body. There is no careful folding this time. She is too hungry for him now, and it overrides her pragmatism, replacing it with instinct.

Rey’s sex aches for Ben’s hard cock. She pulls him to her as she lies back on the blankets beneath him, feeling him press his hips against her, and feeling how stiff he’s growing below his own clothes.

Ben’s mouth finds Rey’s. As she drives her tongue into him, she feels one of his hands at his belt, loosening it. His mouth moves to her neck and she arches against him, bringing it closer. Feeling him find the sweet spot behind her ear.

“Ben…” she breathes as he licks at it. She feels her nipples stiffen and her sex grow wet.

Reading her thoughts, Ben trails his mouth down her neck and to one of her breasts, circling her nipple first with his tongue. Lightly teasing. He hears her moan softly and feels her arch at him again. Attempting to force her nipple closer to his mouth so he will take it inside, and suck at it. Softly nibble it. But he pulls his mouth away then, still teasing.

“Ben,” she groans, as she throws her head back in frustration and takes her own nipple instead in her fingers. Gently rolling it between her index finger and thumb as she watches him free his cock in the semi-darkness of the back of the transport. Her other hand finding the warmth of her sex.

Rey drives her own fingers inside herself, making them wet and throwing her head back again as she looks at Ben’s cock, and imagines it inside her.

Ben smiles slowly as he watches Rey’s body below him, still half dressed. He longs to strip her. He contemplates it now. The heat of their foreplay is quickly warming the transport’s interior. She wouldn’t be cold.

“Strip,” he says, eyes still fixed on the hand at her pussy. Working it.

 _“Fuck,”_ she breathes as she stares up at him, breathing hard. Not wanting to stop the pleasure inside her that she’s started.

Ben lowers his face to hers, his cock still hard.

 _“Strip,”_ he breathes.

Ben pulls roughly at the garments that swathe Rey’s hips, and she wriggles them loose as he tugs them from her. Wriggling again, she hauls her upper underclothes over her head so that now she is laid out bare before him. Flushed from her growing arousal. She reaches for his cock, longing to guide it inside her. But he leans back on his knees, still smiling softly. Still teasing. Slowly, cock still hard, he removes his cowl. Ben stands and removes his boots and pants. Slowly.

“For _fuck’s sake_ , Ben,” Rey groans.

He laughs.

Finally naked, Ben drops to his knees beside Rey. But instead of returning his chest to her own, he pulls her up gently, bringing her body up to his and leaning back. Lying down, so she kneels now above him.

“Turn around,” he says quietly.

And the soft gasp that escapes Rey’s lips does so before she can contain it, as the thought that drifts across Ben’s mind finds her. And drifts across her own. She wriggles again, straddling his face, as his warm hands guide her toward his even warmer mouth. And he enters her at last, as her own mouth closes around his cock and Ben begins to lick lovingly at her cunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut smut smut. Thanks for reading! This chapter had become way too long so I cut out a fair bit of stuff for inclusion in the next chapter. There was just way too much happening, and too soon, and I like it nice and slow! ;) So the story here is fairly simple, with a lot of dialogue and smutty sex. I feel so sad for Finn's character in TLJ and I'm still coming to terms with his actual trilogy story arc and although I do appreciate Rose as a character I haven't been brave enough yet to include her. I think I'm building to it. Probably by the time the Rebels are all in trying to get the Fleet Ship occupied she'll make an appearance. But yeah, I hope i didn't use Finn's character too shallowly in this chapter... Would love to know your thoughts! :) There's a Han quote in #1 from the original trilogy about the Falcon, and another from Shattered Empire in #12, which Luke says. Shara Bey did pilot for Leia, but I added the Han stuff to make a link to what Rey and Ben are doing on Takodana, but also have an idea for a future chapter which involves Han/Falcon/Jakku/Rey which may or may not make it in but wanted to keep a door open for it just in case I changed my mind.


	7. Takodana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On Takodana, Rey continues to write her own tome as Rey and Ben finally reach Maz Kanata. But Maz is not all that she seems.

1\. Past. Takodana.

Maz stokes the wood, coddling the flames that lick at the insects roasting on the skillet above them. Their carapaces popping open as hot gasses release and the meat inside them steams and then toasts. When she smells the sweet-savoury odour, she flips them out with the tip of her finger and onto the makeshift plate, which is really just a fragment of stormtrooper armor that she’d found on a walk round the lake once. In the days following the destruction.

_Those beasts._

Settling down with her mid-morning snack, Maz looks to the skies above Takodana as she chews until it catches her eye. A blue something. It shimmers. At first, she frowns at it. Until she senses what it means.

“Hm.”

The ship’s cloak is faltering.

 

2\. Present. Takodana.

There is still beauty left in this place, although the fires that burnt when it was still smoldering rubble have blackened much of the landscape surrounding Nymeve Lake.

Rey walks with her back to both the transport and the carnage, with Ben at her side and his hand clasped firmly in hers. She leads him closer to the water’s edge and when they reach it she stops him. As well as to Maz, this is where she’s longed to take him. It feels right.

Ben looks out across the water, and the imagery from his dreams – and the words of his father – return to him as they begin to walk out into it.

_For galaxy’s sake, take her to Maz._

The tide around their boots is shallow. Ben can see small fish flitting about the hard edges of his leathers. He stoops in the shallows and begins to remove his boots.

_To bend down and touch it._

Rey watches him, sensing Ben’s feelings. Instinctively, she begins to do the same despite the fact that she can still hear the echo in her mind of the battle sounds that waged as she’d fled Maz’s castle. As she’d tried to escape the vision she’d had inside it. This place still calls to Rey, just as it still calls to Ben.

Leaving their boots and her haversack on the shore, Rey and Ben begin to wade out into the shallows of the lake together as it laps at their ankles and calves. The cool water soothing the abrasions that scar their lower bodies. Legacies from fights they’ve almost forgotten, some with each other.

As they walk, the only sound is the three-beat rhythm of their feet shifting water as they move slowly through it. Feeling its gentle resistance against their shins. The silt between their toes and beneath the soles of their feet.

Ben reaches for Rey’s hand and finds it, lacing his fingers between hers as they continue to walk away from the site of the ruined castle.

“It’s still beautiful,” Rey murmurs, as Ben stares out across its surface to the opposite bank.

_Across the flowing water._

As the lake deepens in its center, the colour of the fresh water changes from white to aqua, and then azure. Reflecting the clear sky above them. Gently, Ben removes his hand from Rey’s and bends his mighty frame down toward it, dipping his palm beneath its shallow surface and trailing his fingers through the gritty soil below. Tiny creatures dash around them as gently he stirs the bed of the lake.

_Pulling the dirt back._

Ben’s eyes find the colours of a shell. Carefully, he hooks his index finger beneath it and lifts it from the sand. Rey watches the sunlight sparkle through the clean water falling from it, cupped safely for now in Ben’s broad palm as he brings it closer to them.

_Preventing it from spoiling._

The flukes of the shell’s edges are still smooth and whole. Rey stretches out her fingers and traces its curves as it lies there, sheltered by Ben’s hand. He opens it wider, so she can see its whole form and when her fingers inadvertently brush against his skin he feels his heart expand at her touch, and his eyes travel from the organic shapes of the shell to those of her face as he begins to watch her.

Feeling his gaze, Rey looks expectantly up at him.

“Sometimes,” Ben murmurs to her, “I wish that she was still here.”

Rey says nothing, sensing an answer to a question she knows, but doesn’t need to speak.

“There are so many things that I wish I could have asked her,” he continues, softly. “How to lead. And why. Why it mattered to lead.”

“There are things she wished she could’ve asked you too, Ben,” Rey says quietly.

He stares at her, searching.

“Show me,” Ben says, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Please.”

 

3\. Past. D’Qar.

Rey willingly breathed the exhausts of the Falcon, uncaring as she walked away from it. Still listless and only vaguely noting the pull to the Light from somewhere near. Trying to tug her out of apathy. Trying to kindle her memories of Han but unable to quell those of Kylo Ren.

_You saw him._

General Organa had embraced Rey then.

_Ben._

In shock, Rey hadn’t known what to do next except let her, still gripped by the terror of watching Han die at the hands of a monster.

_His name is Ben._

Rey held Leia, too, then, as emotion wracked her exhausted body and her memories of Han and Finn surfaced again.

_You saw it. How did it end? What did he say?_

 

4\. Present. Takodana.

Ben’s eyes cloud at the memory, and Rey feels the paralysis gripping his body as feelings beyond his control rule it now. The single phrase he’d uttered then plays on rotation through his mind, as the relentless echoes of his past words cripple him.

_Thank you._

As Rey feels Ben start to physically collapse she brings her hands back to his palm, supporting him and closing all three around the shell in a frantic and last-minute act of protection.

“I don’t know if this is true,” she prefaces, warningly. “It’s just what I think, and I’m afraid it’s not very heartening.”

Although Ben’s gaze is still fixed on their hands, he can sense the rest. He holds his breath, aching to hear her say it at last. His emotions resting on a blade’s edge.

“The ones who’ve come before us haven’t rolled out a path to follow,” Rey says. “They’re gone, Ben. The path is ours to make.”

“Say it,” he whispers.

_Let the past die._

“ _No_ ,” she spurns him again.

Ben’s paralysis breaks as the tension that’s been threatening finally flares in him now, just as it had on the Supremacy when he’d tried yet again to turn her, and she’d refused to accept his offer.

_Join me._

How many times have they gone over this? How many more times would she tease him with prospect? The hope that she would finally listen to him. Accept what he’s been trying to propose to her for so long – an ideological union between them.

“I’d _fucking die_ for you, Rey,” Ben spits at her. “You would _not_ do the same for me.”

 _“_ Leia _wanted_ you to remember the past,” she hisses, prizing his fingers open and extracting the shell.

Rey drops it. It plummets indifferently, straight to the bottom of the lake and completely oblivious to its symbolism.

In a sudden flash of rage, Ben turns his attention to the saber at his hip. But Rey already knows his intention. And just before she feels his hands unclasp her own to move there, she uses the Force to slow and halt them.

“Give me a fucking break, Ben, you _know_ I love you,” Rey states defiantly, looking deep into his furious eyes, and not afraid of them.

“But I _don’t_ need anyone – _or anything else_ – to fucking die for me,” she continues. “Enough is gone already, Ben, so _please_ don’t fucking say that again.”

And Rey thinks of the shell, half buried in the mud at the bottom of Nymeve Lake.

“If you really care that much for me, you will _keep yourself alive_ for me, Ben,” she whispers, tears prickling at her eyes as her voice begins to quake. “And you will _fucking control_ these outbursts. They put you in danger.”

Rey whispers the last phrase. She listens, then, to Ben’s ragged breathing and her own heart at first continues to hammer with emotion as she feels his energy inside her still tumult.

But as Rey and Ben stand together – hands still clasped and bare feet still immersed in the fresh water of the lake – after some time the chaos starts to subside. Ben calms – and so does Rey – and the tension between them settles then as their energies balance once more.

Ben tilts his face to hers.

“Rey,” he whispers. “Something is here.”

“I know, I feel it to,” she murmurs, as she lifts her face closer to his.

“We need to _fucking find Maz.”_

Rey senses it again. The looming Darkness she’s been feeling around Ben since she’d first found him alone in the jungle on Kashyyyk, and then on the transport as they’d made their way here. But now Ben is sensing it, too. As he closes his eyes, he can feel it again. It is close.

Ben turns to his right. He can sense the path now. The pull of the Dark is no longer vague but distinct and calling to him from the forest.

“This way,” he says softly, opening his eyes.

Ben leads them back to the place on the shore where they left their boots. In one clean sweep he drops his hand to his own, lifting them up and striding to a dry portion of bank before sitting down on a section of river slate to face the water, watching Rey do the same.

As Rey stretches out beside him, she feels the warmth of the late morning sun at her back. She sighs, lying back further to rest on her elbows, momentarily forgetting the urgency she’d felt minutes ago – when their feet had still been in the lake – and she had felt the Darkness calling to Ben again.

Rey shifts herself on the sand, stretching out her bare toes. Droplets of water sparkle across them and suddenly she notices how clean they’ve become. No longer streaked with dirt. Her toenails no longer caked in a grime that’s accumulated for galaxy knows how long it’s been since she last bathed her whole body in water.

And it tempts her, then. The lake. She can feel the clean water calling, remembering the last time she’d seen so much of it. The rain on Ahch-To. The feel of it driving down on her hands. The salt water that had sprayed up from the ocean surrounding the island. And then the water beneath it, which had pulled her to it and enveloped her completely. That was the last time she’d felt water surround her. And she had felt panicked then. But when she’d emerged, something else had replaced it. A very different thing.

_What?_

And now, on the shore of the lake, Rey feels the same old panic.

_Poe is waning. Darkness is rising. Ben is turning._

But through the panic, that same different thing is present in her too. Not emotion, but its opposite. A stillness. One she sees in the lake.

Feeling her conflict, Ben watches Rey as she turns her mind from her boots and instead begins to remove and fold her outer garments, until only her scant underclothes remain. In the bright light of day, he watches as the sunlight illuminates her body in ways he’s never seen it. His breath catches in his throat as he watches her stand, mesmerized by her as she’s mesmerized by the water that calls her. She begins to slowly tread toward it again.

 _Come with me_.

And although he can still feel the pull of the forest, of whatever Darkness is lying fatefully within it and waiting for him, Ben doesn’t need to be told twice. Standing, he removes his belt and cowl and follows her.

At first the water is cold against the bare skin of Rey’s calves. As she walks out further, it laps at her lower thighs and she gasps softly. The further she goes, the more the feeling that’s compelled her to enter the water in the first place speaks to her. And gives itself a name.

_Serenity._

And mustering her courage, Rey dives below the surface of the lake at last as sounds become muted and her body weightless until she surfaces again. Turning back to face Ben as she floats on her back. Feeling the sun’s warm light on her face and watching the ripples of her dive reach Ben’s body. Lapping at the powerful muscles of his stomach as he moves toward her, and then circling his pecs as he moves within reach.

Ben dips his head below the surface and when he emerges he pulls Rey to him, feeling her legs wrap themselves around his hips. He places his hands below them, feeling her curves snuggled above them.

Ben’s gaze is captive to the light refracting through the droplets of water that drip from Rey’s hair. The tiny spheres that cling to her lashes, and sparkle on her lips. As he feels her fingers running through the ends of his damp hair, twisting it gently, he nuzzles her nose and brushes his own wet lips against hers as she speaks.

“This is what it feels like,” she says softly to him, “to be peaceful.”

Ben tilts his head to press his forehead against Rey’s as he closes his eyes and feels it. Light. The pull of the forest’s Darkness behind him is suddenly forgotten – as is his earlier anger – and Ben stands with Rey in the water, feeling warmth from the sun on his bare back and the heat from her body beginning to grow where she presses against him.

Ben’s lips find Rey’s, then. Gently, he begins to suck at her lower one before opening his mouth wider and covering her top lip, too. And as he feels her mouth open to meet his, softly he undulates his jaw to slowly kiss her, savoring the clean flavors of the skin around and inside her mouth, and beginning to breathe in the familiar scents of her skin as his passion for her warms his core.

Time seems to stop. Neither Ben nor Rey sense anything else now but the Light in each other, and the Darkness inside them at bay. The emotion they feel for each other, tamed by the serenity of the water that surrounds them. Emotion and serenity, balanced.

 

5\. The Tome of The Last Jedi. Takodana.

On Serenity, Emotion and Control

A Jedi must control serenity in order to contain emotion. For if ever a Jedi were to feel both at once then weakness would be demonstrated. That Jedi would have failed to keep the Dark at bay. Balance can only be achieved when serenity and emotion merge but a Jedi must never stoke such a flame. To do so would breach the Jedi Code. Balance should only be achieved in the Force by the use of Light to control Dark.

 

6\. Present. Takodana.

After a time, gently Rey pulls her face back from Ben’s and arches her neck. Instinctively, he moves his mouth to it, nuzzling at her and brushing his lips behind her ear, feeling her press her hips to him more firmly and hearing her sigh. He smiles, feeling the familiar sensation of his heart expanding at her pleasure. A pleasure he knows he creates in her.

Rey leans back slowly and pulls him toward her.

Letting her go then, Ben watches as she sinks into the surface of the water, sculling on her back. Her darkened nipples hard from the cool water and visible through the wet fabric of her undergarments. Smiling at him, knowing what he sees, she dives below the water again, feeling it embrace, soothe and clean her, and then finally standing now in waist deep water. Closer to the shoreline of the lake.

“I want to show you something,” she says, as she removes her upper undergarments and trails the fabric through the water, rinsing it clean.

“Something _else,”_ she calls across the water between them, as Ben’s eyes move magnetically to the curves of her bare breasts and she reads the thought that lands somewhat clumsily in his head – and senses the amore growing elsewhere – before she turns and heads back to the shoreline.

Smiling, Ben dips his head once more below the surface, enjoying the feeling of the water leaving his hair as when he re-emerges he flicks it from his eyes and forehead, and watches the droplets shoot out across the lake. Then he follows Rey back to the shore.

As Ben wades from the lake with great strides, the clear water cascading from the freshly slick fabric of his pants, he watches Rey, now naked, lay out her underclothes on the river slate in the sun. Then she spreads her outer garments, across a different section of rock, and lies down on her belly. The curves of her arse glisten in the sun and he feels his passion for her body rekindle.

Pausing at the water’s edge, Ben unfastens his pants and removes them, but turns then and walks back in. Rinsing his lower body, too. Lying back, afloat, he gazes up at the sky.

With his ears submerged, Ben hears the soft echoes of the secret world below the surface of the lake. Has he done this before? In a place, long ago? If he closed his eyes now, he could almost fall asleep as the light from the sun kisses his face. It shines just for Ben then, adrift on Takodana. Piloted by the current on a course set by Rey.

The sun has dried her back and now Rey flips her body over. As she does, she reaches for her haversack, spying Ben’s body adrift on the lake as she does so. She reaches out to him through the Force and the sudden joy she senses in him takes her breath away as she feels inside her bag for Master Skywalker’s tome. She lifts the text above her face as she lies on her back on the river slate – warmed by the sun – and thumbs through the pages, finding the verse she’d remembered earlier, as she’d first submerged her body.

Rey reads it again and then marks the page with the pen Ben found her, so long ago now on Ahch-To. She closes the precious book’s covers, setting it down carefully beside her and waiting for him to return. Knowing he will.

Rey closes her eyes and feels for him. Still calm. And feeling Rey sensing for him, slowly Ben stands, gathers his clothes from the water and then wanders out naked from the lake.

When he reaches Rey, her eyes are closed. Ben can’t help but pour his gaze over her body, stretched out bare and illuminated by the light of the midday sun. He dumps his clothes to one side, flicks the last of the lake water from his hair and then lays down beside her.

With eyes still closed, Rey smiles, sensing him but also feeling the cool air that surrounds him as the water evaporates from his skin in the heat of the air around them.

“How was that?” she asks, groggily.

“Mm,” he replies, smiling again. “Fucking _great.”_

Rey laughs, opens her eyes and rolls her body toward him.

“You’re _so_ clean you just about _shine,”_ she murmurs, as she gently pushes Ben’s chest back and straddles him, sitting above him now as he lays down flat on his back against the slate. Rey pushes her hips against his and feels the warmth of him grow, as well as his length, as it starts to press against her sex.

Ben smiles as his damp hands find the dry warmth of Rey’s belly and then move around to feel the curves of her hips, wanting her around him.

And reading Ben’s thoughts, Rey lifts her body from him. Resting on all fours now above him as she brings her face to his and kisses him slowly, remembering the kiss they’d shared in the lake. The slow pace of it. Wanting to feel it again.

Ben senses this. That what Rey wants now is not just sex but intimacy. And so gently he pushes her from him, coaxing her back to the river slate. To the position he’d found her in – stretched out bare on her back.

And once he senses she’s comfortable, Ben positions himself between Rey’s open thighs as he continues to kiss her again as before, slowly undulating his jaw. Arousing her rhythmically and over time. And gradually beginning to feel her chest undulate below him in return as her breathing finds a rhythm she can sustain over time. And when he feels it’s right, gently he fingers her, checking her arousal.

“Ben,” she breathes, arching her head back in a gesture that’s so familiar to him. One which signals a level of arousal in her that he knows means she’s ready.

Grasping his firm cock, Ben steers it inside Rey as he continues to kiss her at the same slow pace and she begins to breathe heavily as his hips find a rhythm that matches their slow kiss. Wanting to nurture her body with physical expressions of so many of the things he’s ever told her. Like that she is someone. Someone he loves.

And as the sun heats his back, Ben makes love to Rey on the river slate flanking Nymeve Lake, unable to distinguish which heat it is that dries the remaining dampness on his skin from the water they’ve just washed themselves clean in. The light, or their love.

“Ben,” Rey breathes again as she tilts her head back and her orgasm threatens.

Ben’s hips move faster in response, as she arches against him. His mouth finds the spot behind her ear and then his lips move to one of her nipples, as he gently holds it between his teeth. Before sucking at it. Feeling the muscles of her, that surround his cock, start to spasm and quake as her climax begins.

 _“Fuck,”_ she cries out as she arches further, feeling the pace of his cock – sliding in and out of her – increase dramatically, and bucking her hips at him in response. Unable to control her body any longer, and instinctively driving her shoulder blades into the hard slate below her. Forcing her breast and nipple closer to him, and deeper inside his mouth.

Ben sucks at it harder as he feels her orgasm peak. And then he feels his own climax verging, as he works at her body and feels her tightening muscles rhythmically spasm around his hard shaft.

And Ben can’t tame it any longer. The desire he feels. Breaking away from her breast, his mouth finding her own – even as it tries to turn itself away from him to fill her screaming lungs with air as she comes below him – he pumps himself inside her and then tears his mouth from her, finally losing control. Submitting completely to his passion for Rey. And he comes inside her then, pulling his face away from hers and watching his cock as it barrels between her thighs at the finish.

Ben physically collapses above Rey, dropping his body to hers and his head to her belly before rolling over and onto his back, feeling the warmth of the stone against it and closing his eyes as the waves of his climax ripple through him. Thinking again of the water of the lake. The summers of his boyhood, long ago.

His thought reaches Rey and she rolls to her side and then snakes her hips over his carefully, knowing he’s still sensitive in places. She sits up atop his thighs, watching his chest rise and fall as his body recovers before bringing her hands to his pecs. Tracing her fingers around the scars that make Ben's chest his own, and then running them lightly down the hard contours of his stomach. Trailing them to his flanks, and then bringing them up once more to his neck. Leaning her upper body forward as her fingers now find the lines of his jaw. She brushes her mouth gently against his lips.

“Let’s wash,” Rey murmurs.

Ben sighs.

“I can’t move,” he mutters, smiling lazily.

Rey kisses his mouth quickly and then stands and walks out to the water again, dunking her whole body briskly in its cool, clear depths before walking back to the shore and the river slate. She sits down next to Ben with her back to the sun. Reclining, and shaking her hair out to dry.

Rey stretches her arms out behind her, and legs out in front. She watches the lingering water from the lake run down her bare knees, the droplets beginning to dry already in the heat of the midday sun. Leaning forward, she wrings her hands briefly, shaking most of the droplets from them before stretching them out by her sides to dry them more fully. And once the sun has done its work she reaches for Luke’s tome.

“Ben? Are you awake?”

“Mm.”

Rey repeats the thing she said to him earlier as she’d coaxed him from the lake.

“There’s something I want to show you.”

Ben turns his head toward the sound of her voice.

“What is it?” he asks sleepily, eyes still closed and mind still adrift in his memories of sun. The surface of planets. Natural bodies of water. The days before he lived on the cold, sterile surfaces of ships. Enclosed within clinical landscapes. Devoid of anything natural. Where he bathed in recycled water, and the only light that touched him was made by circuits and diodes.

“There’s a verse,” Rey begins. “In Master Skywalker’s tome.”

Ben opens his eyes.

“I thought of it earlier. When we were first in the lake. I think it’s what we felt, Ben. I wanted you to hear it and I wanted to know what you thought of it.”

“Read it,” Ben says. But his voice is much gentler than the last time he’d asked her to read something to him. When they’d been on Kashyyyk.

Rey opens the tome at the page where she’d earlier left the pen, to mark it. She reads the verse aloud to Ben and once she’s finished, she returns the pen and closes the covers. Tucking the book in close to her belly.

Rey turns her body slightly on the stone so she can look down at Ben. He is staring at the place where her bare thigh, now dry, curves against the flat river slate, casting a deep shadow created by the bright light from the sun, now directly overhead.

“Well?”

Ben sighs. Slowly, he sits up.

“Rey,” he begins, looking at her grimly as he raises his eyebrows. “You know what I’m going to say.”

Rey exhales a short, sharp breath through her nose.

She _does_ know.

_More of the same old shit._

Rey stands and reaches for her underclothes, now dry. She slowly puts them on, and as Ben watches her he can almost see the cogs of her brain ticking through the verse once more, mulling it over as she fits his opinion – which she shares – around it. Interpreting it. And when she sits back down on the slate beside him, lightly clothed, she re-reads the words one more time and then reaches inside her haversack again and extracts her own book.

Rolling over and on to her stomach, Rey begins to write as Ben watches her at first before standing and starting to collect his own dry garments.

And when Rey is finished, and with the ink of her words still wet in places, she smiles to herself and remembers her former Master.

_I will not be the last Jedi._

 

7\. Present. Takodana.

The bundle on her back is weighty, and so when it stops her – the feeling that pulls for her attention again – Maz tilts her shoulder slowly forward and gently grounds the wood she has collected.

Slowly, she lifts her weary body upright again and breathes out.

_For galaxy’s sake, take her to Maz._

“They are here,” she says heavily, as the vision of Han fades from her mind once more.

 

8\. Present. Takodana.

Rey looks up. She can feel it again. And then the words replay themselves.

_The only fight. Against the Dark side._

And it’s been lurking. The pull of the Dark. Patiently waiting until they were finished. For the Light in them to be slaked. For the right time to make a reappearance.

Ben begins to feel the pull of the Darkness from the forest again. Dressed now, dry, he closes his eyes as it washes over him, like the water from the lake washed him clean. But the residue it leaves makes him anxious. And it’s a feeling he cannot control.

“Rey!” he calls sharply.

She whips her face around, still lost in her own thoughts and far away from the purpose of their journey here. She had almost forgotten.

_We need to fucking find Maz._

Ben begins to walk in the direction he had earlier indicated. Toward the forest.

Rey claws at her things, which are sprawled out all over the river slate still. Throwing her outer garments over her body and fastening them roughly before stuffing the rest of it – books and pen – scruffily back into her bag. Unlike her, not to be ready. She has relaxed too much. Lost sight of purpose. Their purpose.

In the moments it takes Rey to gather it all, Ben has disappeared into the forest. And she frantically scarpers after him, unable to see him now and needing to sense the path he’s walked in order to catch him.

_“Ben!”_

Ben can hear Rey’s voice, but only faintly. As though his ears are still under the water of Nymeve Lake. He kneels, dropping his bare hands to the sides of his powerful body and flattening his palms against the floor of the forest.

Ben closes his eyes. It is calling him again. He breathes in slowly, and just as slowly exhales as he reaches out through the Force with his feelings. Trying once more to locate it. The source of it. The pull of the Darkness.

“Child,” the familiar voice calls. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

 

9\. Diary. Takodana.

On Serenity, Emotion and Balance

A Grey Jedi balances serenity with emotion. Because a Grey Jedi feels and knows the conflict between them. A Grey Jedi recognizes the potential in conflict and harnesses that energy to achieve balance. Because balance can be achieved, when serenity and emotion merge, and when both Light and Dark are acknowledged. But, most importantly, faced.

 

10\. Present. Takodana.

In this part of the forest, there is very little of the sun she’s just run from. Rey shivers as she enters it, so used as she is to the warmth of its full light on the lake’s bank. The way it warmed the slate upon which she and Ben had lain for so long. Too long.

_The only fight._

Whatever it is. Whatever they’ve come here for. It is close.

_Against the Dark side._

And suddenly Rey can see Han again. How, she knows not.

_For galaxy’s sake, take her to Maz._

“But I’m _here,”_ she breathes.

“And they’re _near,”_ he replies.

The tears spill down her cheeks as she sees him.

“Rey,” Han says uncomfortably. _“There.”_

And as he fades Rey locates them. Maz and Ben, through the trees. And carefully she treads to them, not wishing to draw attention to her presence, even though she knows her energy must be screaming through the Force at them both.

But neither of them turns as Rey approaches. And she watches, mesmerized. With one hand at her hip, on the hilt of her repaired saber. Ready to defend Ben. And suddenly very wary of Maz, who stands before him.

Ben towers over her. No longer a boy, but a man. In her hands Maz holds something. Rey can’t quite make it out.

Carefully, Maz places the thing at Ben’s feet. And then she takes two steps back and sighs.

“Rey,” Maz says, as now she turns her gaze beyond Ben. _“Eat.”_

With her hand, Maz indicates the food she has prepared them.

Unaware she’d been spied, Rey looks at her feet.

“Come closer,” Maz says, gently. Welcoming her in.

Rey can feel the hairs on the back of her neck. On her forearms, too. They stand on end. Something is wrong. And Rey doesn’t move.

“I’ve dreamt about you,” Rey states plainly, ignoring the food although her belly is growling. “I’ve heard your voice. Over and over.”

_Saying the same thing._

“But that’s _not_ why you came,” Maz says gently, as she walks carefully to Rey. “ _Child_ , you _know_ the truth. You _know_ why _you_ came _here_.”

Rey blinks.

_You know it._

“There’s something _you_ know,” Rey begins, repeating the line she’d first said to Poe. “And it’s something _he needs_.”

Ben looks then to Rey. She is troubled. The calm that had bathed her as they’d held each other in the lake has all but evaporated, like the residual moisture from their bodies as they’d lain on the river slate afterward. Beneath the heat of the afternoon sun.

Ben reaches out to Rey with the Force. As gently as he can – and he knows it is not the soft touch that she has, and that she uses on him – he pushes his energy inside her. To feel her emotions and to read her thoughts. To get inside her head. To understand this. He has longed to arrive at this moment. Why hasn’t she? She possesses the Darkness, he _knows_ it. Why isn’t she glad to be here? It feels so good to Ben. Has called him for so long, and from so far away. And now he is here, ready to embrace it, whatever it is. He can feel it so close. He longs for her to feel it too. The verge of satisfaction. That he knows he is inches from feeling. That lies within the strange bundle that has been placed before his booted feet.

Maz turns her face toward Ben, sensing his growing urgency. Feeling his intrigue. And knowing the time she’s waited so long for has finally come. Slowly, she turns away from Rey and Ben and walks toward the campsite, that now they can see in the distance. Smoke billowing sleepily from the embers of the fire that cooked the food Maz prepared for them. And beyond it her sleeping quarters. A small camp bed and some haversacks.

Maz reaches into one of them now.

“Hm,” she mutters, as she feels around inside it. Searching. “Aha!”

As Maz pulls her arm from within the bag, her fist is clasped around a thing. Something small. And briskly she treads back to Rey and Ben, as a knowing smile breaks across her face.

“I found it,” she says, triumphantly. And she gazes up at Ben. “It is here. It is for you.”

Maz reaches out her knotted hand. She reaches it high up toward Ben. And he takes it in his own smooth one. Aware of the contrast between his and hers as he lingers on where they touch. Aware of her age and experience. Aware of her knowledge and wisdom.

“A holo?” he mutters, staring at her. Not expecting this. A small grey cylinder, nestled in his palm. Like the shell.

“Yes,” she says, smiling up at him. “More than just one, Ben. Your mother recorded these for you when you were a youth. When she was away. When she couldn’t be with you.”

A faint gasp escapes Rey’s lips as Ben stares at Maz, and then turns his gaze down and toward his hands once more. Turning the casing containing the holos over in his big palms. Protecting them. Remembering the shell.

“From my mother?” he breathes.

“Yes,” Maz says.

“But how did…?”

“Your uncle – Luke – left them with me. He knew they had never reached you. Knew that you had never had the chance to see them. Leia – your mother – she left the originals all with her brother and he gave them to me. To keep here for you. Sensing that one day, Ben, they would find you. Even though you were so far away. So far away in Darkness. But that one day, Ben, you just might need them. _Would_ need them. And would need to be _reminded_.”

“Of what?” Ben breathes.

 _“_ Of why it _matters_ , Ben,” Maz says gravely. “ _To lead.”_

Rey gasps.

Ben stares at her.

“There’s _more_ ,” he breathes, greedily. “What else?

 _“Ben,”_ Rey implores, but he ignores her.

“What _else?”_ Ben repeats, his tone menacing. _“Tell me.”_

“I will do more than that,” Maz says, smiling at Ben now as she walks to his feet. “Young Solo, I will _show_ you.”

And Maz kneels before the bundle she’d placed there earlier.

“The belonging you seek,” she adds, “Is _here_. Before your own two feet, Ben.”

And carefully Maz unwraps the fabric that swathes the thing inside it.

Rey leans forward. Ben holds his breath. And Maz flicks the final sheaths of the material that conceals it. The saber that once belonged to Vader.

Ben gasps.

 _“But it was_ _destroyed!”_ Rey roars, unable to believe that this is what they’ve delayed going to the Yavin system for. A _Sith_ relic, of all things. And one that is known to be long gone. She has read it.

“It was _not,”_ Maz corrects. “Luke Skywalker recovered it. He _deliberately lied_ about its fate and hid it away. Hid it _here_ , Rey. Just as he hid the one you command now.”

 _“Why?”_ she hisses, still refusing to believe that her Master could have ever done such a heinous thing. To recover a Sith weapon. And to afford it protection for so long.  

“Luke foresaw its _power_ ,” Maz reveals. “To change not just the course of a war, Rey, but the course of a galaxy, too.”

 _“No,”_ Rey breathes, with tears in her eyes. “He _wouldn’t_.”

Ben looks at Rey and feels her heart breaking as a truth he’s known for years is suddenly brutally hammered home to her, and she is at once betrayed not just by one but two mentors.

“Yes,” Maz says, gently, feeling her sorrow acutely. “He did, Rey.”

The conflict in Ben is suddenly immense. He feels Rey slipping as the Light in her flickers and threatens to fade. Through the Force, he begs Maz not to say anymore. But he knows better than to try and command fate.

“And now it calls to _you_ , Ben.”

And now Ben knows the source of the pull that has called him since Kashyyyk. And his eyes return to the lightsaber, half-swaddled in the cloth on the floor of the forest as his mind turns once again to Rey. Knowing that without her, he would not even be here. Knowing that without Rey, he may never have even known of the significance of this place. That there was something waiting that was so much more than just Snoke’s vision for him. As a Knight of Ren and Snoke’s Apprentice. As the Supreme Leader of the First Order. And as the sole survivor of a bloodline that had almost petered itself out. One that had almost died at the hands of his uncle. Who he had been trained to hate. Who he’d never been trained to trust. And yet who’d preserved the one thing that had made his grandfather memorable. The one person he’d been trained to idolize. Vader, and his weapon. The crux of his power. Its heart.

But it is Maz, and not Rey, who Ben finally chooses to speak to.

“This… _was my_ _grandfather’s?”_ Ben murmurs, transfixed as the lightsaber’s Darkness harnesses him, and at last hauls him in.

 _“Yes,”_ Maz says. “ _Take it_.”

Ben looks at it, terrified. He uses the Force to reach out for Rey but she is in turmoil, still reeling from the shock of Luke’s deceit. Unable to accept the truth as Maz has told it.

Ben closes his eyes and thinks back to Ilum. The light of his own, unfinished saber. Gilding his edges. And the thing that Rey had taught him to do with it.

_Push it out._

To her. To Rey.

Because the drive in Ben to revive Rey’s Light with his own is strong. It is she who has planned for him to be here, prolonging her own needs and desires in order to appease his. And it is she who has brought him here, completing the journey from Kashyyyk as he’d emotionally collapsed – once again – on the transport. And it is also she who’d held his hand as it trembled with anger in the lake. At the misguided thought that she didn’t care enough about him.

And Ben could go on. On and on and on with the list of things she’d done for him. And yet what had he ever done for her?

Ben returns his thoughts to the present. And as he does it now – the nameless thing that Rey had taught him to do – he feels the edges of her body embraced by the ragged red light of his own saber. And it strengthens him to remember the bond he has made with her. The _bonds_. The emotional bonds, which have connected their minds through the Force since Ahch-To. The physical bonds, which have connected their bodies in ways he could never have dreamt about, even in his most daring imaginations of her. And the ideological bonds, which were emerging now as she read to him. As she was beginning to share with him her own visions and desires for the way she – they – could shape the galaxy. Could change it. Or at the very least question it, and what had come before them. To understand it together. Not alone anymore. Friends. Lovers. Allies.

 _“No,”_ he says defiantly to Maz, as he pushes his energy inside Rey and desperately searches for the waning Light in her. He cannot lose her to Darkness. Not now.

 _“Ben,”_ Maz croons again, taking a step toward him and craning her neck to see his face. “Come _closer,_ child.”

At first, as Ben’s hand moves rapidly to his own saber – the unfinished one he’d made and that is still harnessed now to his hip – Rey thinks Ben's instinct is to kill Maz as Rey hears her speak the final words to him. Familiar words. First spoken to Rey by Snoke and overheard by Ben.

And although Rey is conflicted, out of sheer love she moves to block him then from using the Force to lash out.

But this time Ben is ready for it, and it is Rey who finds herself pinned, as Ben’s hand grips his own weapon’s hilt, and he removes it from its place at his hip.

“Ben, _no!_ ” Rey cries in abject terror, physically bound by his use of the Force, and – for the first time in a long time, since they’d first met here, in this very forest – completely unable to stop him.

But then Ben drops to one knee and places the glinting hilt carefully on the floor of the forest as he kneels before Maz, who smiles gently back at him now. As they see eye to eye. Equals.

“Ben,” Maz murmurs again, lifting her goggles and looking – for the first time – at his adult eyes with her own ancient ones.

 _“It calls to you._ You _feel_ it. And you cannot ignore it. You must face it, Ben, whatever it is.”

“I can’t,” he whispers.

“You _can_ Ben. And, you _must_. It is _your_ _destiny_.”

And to Rey’s horror, Maz touches Ben’s face. Just as Han had touched it in the moments before his heart had beaten for the last time on Starkiller Base.

 _“Let the past die,”_ Maz breathes to him.

 

11\. Past. Takodana.

“Sir!”

“What is it?”

“We’ve spotted a transport.”

“A transport?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Monitored?”

“Yes, sir. Heading toward the surface. Due west. Ten hundred hours. It’s equipped with a cloaking device but it seems that re-entry disrupted the shield and the vessel re-emerged briefly before landing.”

“Excellent work,” purrs the Captain. “I will alert Leader Hux at once.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I really wanted to give Maz more in this story than she got in TLJ. Every time I watch it, I feel sad that she is under-used and so I wanted to explore the idea of her as almost Ben’s Yoda or something in this story… Would love to hear what you think in a comment! I wrote the start and end of this chapter a while ago and then needed to spend time on the middle so couldn’t really help but just chuck in some more sex - why not! ;) But I also genuinely did want to just explore the Ben psyche a bit more because he’s just such a hot mess that it’s hard not to go there time and time again! Hence the shell, then Leia and the holos. The holo idea came from that Bloodlines novel. I also have this idea in my head that Rey and Ben, as Grey Jedi, are going to challenge the established political binaries (Republic-Resistance/Empire-First Order) once they finally get their hands on some resources so I re-introduced the tomes and writing in this chapter as a way to start to document their like emerging ‘movement’. And just really love the idea that Rey is, when writing, ‘a woman alone with her thoughts’. And that that’s a good thing and something that makes her intellectually independent and strong as a character. As well as physically strong, and strong with the Force and all that. She’s just awesome :)


	8. Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Realizing that she’s a Grey Jedi, Ben has joined Rey. Knowing he’s mourning Han, Rey has taken him to see Maz Kanata on Takodana, where Rey and Ben have just discovered that Luke recovered Darth Vader’s lightsaber at the end of ROTJ and gave it to Maz to protect until the time was ‘right’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am back to the grind of full-time work - urgh! - so here is the first of some shorter installments in this series. Hope you enjoy! Would love to know what you think in a comment.  
> This was written in response to the “Colors” challenge from @reylo-week-2018 and will be on Tumblr soon @jesssssah

Ben stares at the bare hands that are still something of an oddity to him. And then - to the rhythm of Rey’s panic and the melody of Maz’s approval - he reaches for the lightsaber that was made by Darth Vader. Afraid but committed.

_Reflections on a polished veneer. No horizon, no heroic frontier. Where the impossible can exist. Compromise._

_The sound of her voice, breaking his internal haze. Removing one glove, then the other. And then reaching for her hand. Comfort._

_Asleep at his side, warm and soft. Her curves snuggled against his angles. The smell of her hair, sweet and earthy. Intimacy._

_Lifting her limp body from the cockpit of the X-wing. Pressing it to his chest. The sight of the junk boss in his own mind, too. Empathy._

_Watching her move rhythmically. Mesmerized as she undulates in silhouette against the darkness. Verging as she grinds down on him. Desire._

_Immersing himself in her emotions. A familiar sensation, like a plunge. And feeling her do the same to him, measured and controlled. Trust._

_Wanting to nurture her body with physical expressions of so many of the things she’s ever told him. Like that she is someone. Someone he loves._

_I’ll not leave you here. I’ve got to save you._

_You already have._

Ben lets it go. The lightsaber falls back to the nest of cloth in which Maz has kept it safe for so long. He stares once more at his ungloved hand, turning it over and marveling at the tones of his true skin, the forms of his raw digits and the feeling that still lingers in the nerves contained within it all. The human, mortal, fallible shell of his hand. Unlike anyone else’s.

The feeling was not what Ben had expected. The feeling was not violent. The imagery he’d seen in the vision had not been full of the terror he’d always imagined his grandfather had inspired. That Ben himself wanted to emulate but been so afraid to.

Instead, the feeling was calm. The imagery was peaceful. As Ben had held the weapon, it was as though there was no physical boundary between it and him at all. There was no conflict. No fight. There was only a sense that somehow this was always a moment that would happen. That Ben needed to experience in order to realize something. That he was not only his grandfather’s relation, but his mother’s also. A fighter, yes, but a lover, too.

Ren, Skywalker, Solo, Organa. All of it.

And that this - what Maz had placed before his feet and tempted him to claim as fated - was not a weapon at all any longer. It was a message.

“Ben,” Maz says gently. “You are more like her than you know.”

As Rey continues to stand behind them - still pinned by Ben’s use of the Force to contain her, and still bathed in the protective red light of his Force-shield - she can feel the emotional choke beginning in him. Can feel the lump rising in Ben’s throat as Maz’s words wash over him.

And although she’s still physically bound, Rey can still use the Force to push her own blue Force-shield to Ben and gild his edges with it now. Returning the expression of the Light he had earlier saved in her.

And the viridian canopy of the trees in the forest above them turns the faintest shade of a new color.

“Hm,” Maz chuckles quietly.

And for just a moment - as Ben feels the peace he’d first felt in the lake return - he watches the hue, almost grey, slip gently around the bare hand at which he still stares.

_Violet._

Rey feels Ben’s Force-hold on her body release and notices she’s shaking. Her stomach is still growling but it’s the last thing on her mind as she closes the physical distance between her and Ben. 

Rey drops to her knees beside him so that they and Maz are gathered together around Vader’s recovered saber, under the violet-tinged canopy; the color of the light of Rey and Ben’s combined Force-shields, which they still use to gild their own and each other’s bodies.

“Ben,” Rey whispers. “ _What did you see?_ ”

Rey hears Ben breathe out deeply through his mouth. As she watches him, she sees him draw another breath in, hold it, and then release it again as before. But she can feel the calm in him. Doesn’t need to hear and see it expressed through the physical rhythms of his body. But it’s nice to watch it anyway. It’s nice to watch him peaceful.

Ben turns his face to her then.

“You,” Ben murmurs. “I saw  _you_.”

He looks at Rey’s wide eyes. The violet light flickers across them and he smiles faintly at her expression, one of shock.

Rey blinks.

“And,” Ben continues slowly, frowning slightly, “I heard…”

Maz touches his hand encouragingly. Ben looks across at her and she smiles gently, already knowing.

“My uncle,” he says faintly. “And my grandfather.”

Ben reaches out to his own saber. The unfinished one he’d made as Snoke’s Apprentice. Made in the image of his grandfather’s. Made to kill.

“I thought I’d see violence,” Ben murmurs, as he turns the unfinished saber over in his hands.

Rey remembers Ben’s behavior on the transport as they’d traveled to Takodana from Kashyyyk. How he’d sat alone, isolated and angry, in the back of the ship and studied it.

“I thought I’d see Darkness,” he continues, now tracing the exposed circuitry with his fingers. A fine red line slicing across the otherwise smooth exterior. Like the ribbons of rock across the snowy surface of Ilum. Or the battle scars across his own pale body.

“Why didn’t I?”

Ben looks to Maz, who smiles again.

“Time to eat,” she says brightly, and she turns then and walks toward the food she’d earlier requested Rey enjoy.

“Then,” Maz continues, “We can discuss the finer points of your vision, Ben.”

Rey and Ben stand. As Maz fusses around the campsite, Ben pockets the small cylinder containing the holos from his mother and returns his own saber to its place at his hip. He turns to Rey, whose face still wears an expression of utter bewilderment.

“I don’t understand  _any_  of this…” she mutters.

Smiling, Ben pulls Rey to him, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling her hair. Holding her so close she can’t feel where her own body ends and his begins. And although she feels no closer to the answers she seeks, somehow she feels calmer as her arms find his neck and wrap themselves around him in return. Smelling the familiar scent of his skin. Feeling again the warmth of him. And noticing the light once more.

“Violet…” Maz chirps, sensing Rey’s thought.

The buoyant sound of Maz’s voice returns Rey and Ben to the present. They separate cautiously and the word lingers in Rey’s mind.

_Violet._

“The last color in the spectrum,” Maz says cheerily as she hands Rey a plate of toasted insects. They smell incredible and Rey’s stomach growls again as the scent hits her nostrils, knowing she’ll inhale these in about two seconds and hoping there’s more. It’s been a long time since breakfast on Kashyyyk.

“The  _what?_ ” Rey says, still totally confused.

“The last color,” Maz repeats as she removes her goggles and holds them up to a ray of light filtering through the canopy above.

“In the spectrum,” Maz continues, as the light splits on its path through the glass prism and the colors fall on the vivid white fragment of junk which Maz holds beneath it, and on which she’s about to plate Ben’s meal.

“That is visible to the eye before the darkness,” Maz finishes ominously, as she flips the remaining insects onto the makeshift plate with the edge of her lens, and hands it to Ben before returning the lenses to her eyes.

“So,” Maz says eagerly, adjusting her goggles slightly and then beginning to pour steaming green liquid into a variety of oddly shaped white vessels from a curved piece of copper that’s been resting above the hot coals of the campfire.

“How much have you discovered about it?”

“Huh?” Rey says, through a mouthful of bug flesh, turning to Ben for some sign that  _he_  understands what Maz is talking about.

But Ben - who has already cleared his plate - is gazing at its surface.

“Is this  _stormtrooper_  armor?” he asks, completely changing the subject.

Rey glares at him.

“ _Ben!_  Are you  _even listening?_ ”

Ben swallows the last of his lunch and then takes a gulp of the tea that Maz has just handed him.

“ _This,_ ” he says to Rey as she takes a sip of hers and he momentarily ignores her reprimand, motioning instead to the thing that doubles as his cup, “Is  _definitely_  a shoulder guard.”

“And  _this_  one,” Maz adds, raising her own, “Is a codpiece.”

Rey snorts out her tea through her nose as Maz takes a big swig. She winks at Rey then, who is oddly reminded of Master Skywalker sucking down sea cow milk on Ahch-To.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” Maz intones, after swallowing her mouthful. 

“After all, that’s why you’re here. Isn’t it?”


	9. Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still on Takodana, Maz Kanata has fulfilled her promise to Luke Skywalker by passing to Ben the saber that once belonged to Vader, a relic thought to be lost. But Rey has many questions about what this now means for her own destiny, as well as for Ben’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quickie in response to the “Destiny” challenge from @reylo-week-2018. Will be on tumblr soon @jesssssah

Rey swallows the last bite of insect on her plate as Maz reaches for it. 

“Plenty more,” she says kindly, as she begins to re-load Ben’s.

“Discovered about  _what?_ ” Rey says again, as Maz hands back the plate. “And thank you, by the way. Thank you for this. I’m sorry if we’ve been rude.”

Maz smiles.

“Child, I was expecting you. From the moment I met you I knew you’d return. Not with Han’s boy, mind you, but Rey I knew  _you’d_  come back. We never had a chance to really talk, the first time.”

Rey looks at her plate guiltily, remembering all of a sudden how she’d found the lightsaber she now carried and that had belonged to Master Skywalker, and to his father before that. And even, once, to Ben. 

Rey remembers how she’d panicked at the vision she’d seen when first she touched it. Had not even been invited to, as Ben had been by Maz just now. Rey had reached as though she were entitled.  _But had it not called to her? Wasn’t she destined?_

And where Ben had seen peace, Rey had seen violence. Her parents seemingly abandoning her as Plutt had grabbed her tiny arm. Had seen Ben - Kylo - and the Knights of Ren in the midst of the destruction of the Jedi Temple. And had foreseen Ben - Kylo - here, on  _this planet_. Advancing toward her, saber ignited, in the moments before he’d immobilized and kidnapped her. 

Rey had  _certainly_  seen violence. Was that because this saber wasn’t offered to her?  _Wasn’t_  destined for her? Had she instead  _determined_  her own fate then?  _Stolen it_ , like everything else?

_A real kleptomaniac._

“Tell me,” Maz says gently, breaking Rey’s slide into self-doubt. “Child, you are safe here. Please, tell me what it is you think.”

Rey pauses, considering this, and then with a deep breath she asks the question that’s been troubling her. Or one of them.

“When I touched this saber,” Rey begins, “I saw violence.”

She grounds her now empty plate, unclips the weapon from her hip and holds it out in front of her, turning it over in an action that mirrors Ben’s earlier one.

“ _Why?_ ” Rey asks in earnest. “ _Why_  would  _I_ see that and Ben…  _Ben_  would see peace? When  _he_  held a weapon that had…”

“Done so much harm?” Maz offers.

 _“Yes,”_  Rey breathes, somewhat ashamed of herself for even thinking it; that she was somehow better than Ben. “Has mine done more?  _Or is it me?_  Am I…?”

“Firstly,” Maz says, cutting Rey off. Feeling her slide into a place she doesn’t need to go and that there’s no need for right now, “ _that_ lightsaber  _called_  to you, Rey. But you are right - it is not destined to be the only one you will wield. You know this and you have gathered the parts to build your own  _because you know this_.”

“But I  _haven’t_ ,” Rey concedes. “I’ve no  _plasma_.”

“Ah,” Maz says cryptically. “But how many lightsabers does a Force-user need?”

“What?” Ben says, abruptly returning his attention to the conversation. Sensing a path.

Maz smiles, knowing the seed is planted and promptly changing tack.

“How much have you discovered about it?” she repeats.

Ben stares at Maz, suddenly understanding the question, but still distracted by her previous comment he turns his gaze to Vader’s saber once more, still lying benignly in its cloth on the floor of the forest nearby.

“Rey knows some things,” he murmurs. “She’s begun a tome.”

“Hm,” Maz chirrups. “Han was right.”

“What?” Rey says, stumped again. “Right about  _what?_ ”

“He knew your parents, child.”

“Ben already told me,” Rey says softly.

“He  _did?_ ” Maz says, surprised.

“Yes,” Rey confirms.

Maz smiles.

“Well,” she says gently. “No wonder.”

“No wonder  _what?_ ” Rey asks, boggled yet again by Maz’s increasingly obscure replies to her questions.

“Young  _Bey_ ,” Maz murmurs. “You are more important to him than you know.”


	10. Soulmates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Under Maz Kanata’s continued and increasingly obscure guidance, Rey and Ben have grown closer to understanding how their Force-crossed paths are entwined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In response to the “Soulmates” challenge from @reylo-week-2018 and on tumblr soon @jesssssah  
> Also got some little drawings and AUs coming there soon so come visit me if you feel like it x

Rey stares at Maz, who drains the last of her tea. Rey’s own tea is growing cold. She picks it up and cradles the up-cycled armor in her hands. Just the feeling of holding it - something to drink that someone else has prepared her - is comforting. Tears prickle at Rey’s eyes, and then before she can stop them they tumble down her cheeks.

Feeling her emotion, Ben returns his attention to her.

“Hey,” he breathes, placing one of his big hands on her back in an effort to comfort her. “Let’s build a saber.”

“What?” she chokes.

“No time like the present”, Maz says, as she begins to gather their improvised dishes. 

“Where’s your stuff?” Ben says, standing up and stretching out his arms behind his back in a characteristic gesture.

Rey wipes her face and hands her dishes to Maz, before finding her feet and taking several steps back from the campfire; toward the section of forest floor where Vader’s recovered saber still rests.

“Here,” Rey says to Ben, as she unclasps her haversack and pulls the precious electronics from its depths.

Ben spreads the scavenged parts out carefully, frowning. Then he unclips his own saber and lays it down nearby. Finally, he walks to the saber that once belonged to Vader and picks it up adeptly. His thumb hovers momentarily over the activator as he mulls his next move. 

And then Ben hits it. Darth Vader’s weapon ignites and Ben marvels at the craftsmanship. The blade is as smooth as glass as he wields the hilt deftly. It feels as though his fingers end at its tip. There is barely a tremor up his hand or along his arm as he moves through motions he knows by heart.

“Fuck,” Ben breathes. “This thing is precise.”

Rey watches Ben as he handles the weapon. Fluidly working through a series of choreographed movements she’s never even seen.

 _“Ben,”_  she mutters as she watches him, transfixed. “How in the fuck do you  _do_ that?”

Ben slows and then stops. He extinguishes the weapon, pausing to stare at its hilt for several moments before responding to her question.

“We should train,” he says, smiling. “I’ll teach you. What have you done, anyway? In the past? How did you train?”

Rey grimaces.

“Um,” she begins. “Well, I mean  _you’ve_  seen it. I just … swing it around and occasionally hit stuff.

“You do a lot more than that. You’re crafty Rey. You’re fucking  _good_.”

“Not  _great_  though. Mostly I just do stuff that I used to do on Jakku with my quarterstaff.”

“You’re pretty good with  _that_  thing, too,” Ben says, trying to keep her focus on the upside because he can sense the shame she feels at her lack of a more formalized training.

“I guess you  _get_  good,” Rey says, blushing. “When you have to. On Jakku, bandits would fucking eat you alive unless you had  _some_  sort of a defense.”

Ben smiles, pleased to see her brighten. Pleased that at last his words seem to be landing where he wants them to.

“So,” Ben says, “you wanna use your weapon or mine? You looked pretty good in mine on the Supremacy.”

Rey raises an eyebrow.

“Skills, Solo,” she says, mildly aroused at the chance to spar with him and hoping like hell the dishes are distracting Maz from their thoughts now. “They’re what make the  _real_ difference.”

Ben throws her his weapon.

“Alright, kid,” he says cockily. “Stance. Don’t stand like that.”

“What?” 

“Don’t do  _that_ ,” Ben assesses, watching her. “What you’re doing? You’re way too open. Close it down. Do  _this_.”

Ben rocks on his feet to emphasize the way the weight of his body is distributed across them. Rey copies him. 

“Better,” he says, nodding. “Okay, now show me your first position.”

Rey holds the saber up with both hands over her shoulder, so that the tip of the blade is above her chin.

“No way, kid,” Ben gauges, and he extinguishes Vader’s weapon and walks toward Rey.

“What’s wrong with it?” she says frowning. “Worked okay on the Supremacy.”

“Yeah it did, but  _I_  can read you like a book,” Ben says, ducking beneath the blade and grasping her shoulders gently.

Rey deactivates the weapon and turns her face toward him.

“You  _know_ ,” she says, grinning, “this is kind of  _hot_.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, slowly, “but do you wanna learn, or not?”

Rey pauses to think.

“Um…”

Ben raises an eyebrow.

“Fucking show me, Ben,” she finishes, definitely aroused now.

“Okay,” he sighs, mildly disappointed but then remembering they’re not alone, and so resigning himself to something less explicit.

“You need a neutral first position. Don’t give away what you  _want_  to do, or what you’re good at. Don’t give them the advantage of  _knowing your strength_. And strength is determined by your  _instinct_. If you wield high, they know you’re a hitter.  _Don’t_  give them  _that_ much knowledge about you. Close it  _down_.”

And Ben gently moves Rey’s arms out in front of her to mirror his own first position, so that the hilt of the saber is stretched out before her like the cross hairs of a blaster.

“ _This_  is the most effective first position,” Ben explains softly.

And he can’t help but brush his lips behind her ear as he does so, at which Rey feels her nipples stiffen and her sex begin to slowly pulse. 

“Fuck you, Ben,” she breathes, leaning back against his hard body as she feels his fingers relax around her forearms and begin to lightly stroke them.

“I would like it  _very_  much if you would do that later,” he whispers as his mouth finds her lobe and then gently sucks at it.

Rey sighs. For not the first time does she find herself wondering how long she’s been somewhere. Losing track of time is something she was never accustomed to until she met Ben. But these days she finds that less and less it matters. How long she’s been in a place. How many days or nights have passed. She used to tally the time obsessively that had passed since she’d been taken to Jakku. But Ben has changed that. And she has lost track of it again, here on Takodana.

Ben sighs. For not the first time does he find himself wondering how long it’s been since he’d let himself feel so much good for anyone. And where there had been a hole, now there was none. Where there had been a void, now there was a nebula. Where there hadn’t been hope for him, she had somehow found it. He - so fluid and emotive - had been given a purpose by Rey. And he knew it was to comfort her, nurture her and love her. She was reason and logic. She balanced him. 

And Ben tells himself again now that he will die to protect her. To protect the soul that is saving his own.

“Supper’s ready,” Maz calls.

Rey takes one final look at the way the hilt of the saber appears in front of her as Ben continues to hold her hands in the correct position before she relaxes her arms, and he follows suit. Then they walk back to the campfire.


	11. Takodana

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey grows stronger in the Dark side of the Force as Ben attempts to counsel her, but more immediate concerns trouble them as they realize that the First Order have them in their sights.

1\. Present. Takodana.

Maz plates three serves of steamed convor-egg custard. The smell wafts enticingly from the makeshift cups they’d earlier all sipped their tea from.

“Maz,” Rey admits, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand once she’s done devouring it. “This is _honestly_ the best food I’ve _ever_ had in my life.”

“Oh,” Maz croons. “You are always welcome here.”

She hurriedly gathers their bowls and refills them.

“Now,” she says, as Rey and Ben begin their second helpings. “You have yet to tell me, Rey.”

“What?” Rey mumbles through a mouthful of more custard.

“Of this tome Ben speaks of.”

“Oh.”

Rey swallows the last of her second helping and grounds the bowl.

“Do you _really_ want to know of it? I just assumed that…”

“ _Never_ assume,” Maz says, smiling. “Especially things about _me.”_

Rey furrows her brow, contemplating the ramifications of showing someone other than Ben her writing. But after a time she decides that unless there’s an audience, there isn’t in fact a whole lot of point and so she stands and walks to her haversack, rummaging briefly around inside it until she feels the covers of the book. Hesitantly, still unsure, Rey removes it and walks it back to Maz.

“It’s not finished,” Rey confesses, as she extends the hand that clasps the tome.

“Child,” Maz chuckles. “Have you _seen_ these goggles? Good galaxy, if I could read I wouldn’t need to do so much talking! Please, kindly _paraphrase_ for a _very old_ Force-sensitive spacer.”

Rey pulls her hand back and clasps the book to her chest. Then she sits back down beside Ben and opposite Maz and takes a very deep breath.

“What do you know about Grey Jedi?” Rey asks her, stalling.

“A- _ha!”_ Maz says, beaming and sensing Rey’s enduring nervousness. “Nothing whatsoever. So, please, Rey, _do_ enlighten me.”

“Well,” she wavers, still tentative. “I could… read it out to you, I suppose.”

“That would be lovely,” Maz says, gently. “Not least of all because it’s been so long since I’ve been read to. The wake of a murderous conflict does have the tendency to keep the people away. For a short time, at least.”

Cautiously Rey smiles, and then she thumbs through the pages to one of the earliest things she wrote in her own words.

 _“On peace, passion and balance,”_ she starts, in a small voice, before looking up at Maz who nods to her encouragingly, and Rey gives her a small smile before continuing.

_“A Grey Jedi balances peace with passion. Because a Grey Jedi feels and knows the conflict between them. A Grey Jedi recognizes the potential in conflict and harnesses that energy to achieve balance. Because balance can be achieved, when peace and passion merge, and when both Light and Dark are acknowledged. But, most importantly, faced.”_

Rey looks up.

“That’s all,” she states, bluntly. “There’s some other stuff I wrote about… other stuff. Serenity and emotion, but… it’s kind of the same. It’s still about… balance.”

Ben smiles, remembering the verse she’d read aloud to him by the lake.

“It’s beautiful,” Maz murmurs. “And, Rey, it is _heartfelt_. This is something Luke never had the courage to pursue. Although he possessed one, like his father, for much of his adult life he could not _own_ his heart until it was – almost – too late.”

“Is it true?” Ben asks softly.

Maz raises an eyebrow. “I sense your doubt, Ben, but also your _want_ to believe but I’m afraid you’ll have to specify. I am no Jedi. Mind tricks, sadly, allude me.”

“Rey says,” Ben starts slowly, carefully selecting every word but also working hard to maintain his composure as he feels the familiar bile rise in his throat as his uncle becomes the subject of conversation again. A thing he’s never liked.

Feeling this, Rey holds her breath and prepares for the worst.

“Rey says…,” he restarts, “that in the end Skywalker led my grandfather. Taught him… compromise.”

Ben struggles with the final word and Maz and Rey both sense it, exchanging nervous glances.

“To me that implies,” Ben continues, knowing they’re afraid of him now but not caring. This question has burned in him for too long and he needs it answered. It’s why he’s here.

“To me that implies that compromise - _not_ balance - will shift the tide but that the First Order will never be brought down because a Resistance will never be gone.”

He pauses, waiting for a reaction but it doesn’t come. They are letting him finish. He is being heard.

“But that when the Grey Jedi Order rises with _her_ ,” he continues, as he motions to Rey with his empty bowl, “the compromise she brings as its leader will balance the galaxy with a new third Order, making a trilogy. A trinity of ideas. Is that true? _Will it happen?”_

 _“Ahh,”_ Maz breathes. “A _triangle,_ the most _stable_ of shapes...”

“That’s _not_ happening,” Rey says plainly, her voice laced with both disbelief and resolution as she stands, dropping the book to the ground. “I will _never_ lead anything. I will _not_ be like _them._ And quite frankly I don’t need any more of this shit.”

Rey turns on her heel and abruptly runs, to where she knows not and just as she’d done from her vision as she’d first held the lightsaber that once belonged to Luke. She’d had enough. Finn was right. _This was crazy._

“You stay, I’ll go,” Ben says to Maz as he, too, stands.

Out of habit he clips his saber to his belt before leaving, relieved that for once it’s Rey and not he who’s cracked it.

“You don’t _need_ things, Rey!” Maz calls after her, now also standing but not following. Sensing that to leave to Ben the delicate task of restoring faith in Rey was the only path and that to trust him was right, because he’d collected her before, and from _this forest_. There was a symmetry there, somewhere. She was certain of it.

“But there _is_ an ocean of want in you,” Maz finishes, under her breath, as she watches Ben disappear after Rey. _“You do want many things.”_

Rey has slowed to a brisk and furious walk. She can feel the tears prickle at her eyes and she clenches her fists and purses her mouth as she desperately tries to stuff them back in. Sick of this pathetic reaction she always has to stress: to fucking _cry._

When she was taken to Jakku, she’d cried. When Ben had asked her to join him, she’d cried. It was _pathetic_. _She_ was pathetic and she was _no leader_. _She would not lead anything._ She was determined. _Poe_ was the leader, and Ben. Ben had leadership _in his_ _blood_. Ben was the _born leader_ and she was only _a girl_ anyway. Who cried at the drop of a helmet and who shouldn’t even _be_ here because she’d stolen a destiny never meant for her.

_A real kleptomaniac._

She was a _pilot_ , like her _mother_ , and that was _all._ _That_ was her destiny. _That_ was her calling. Ben was meant to follow Leia and she was meant to walk the path of Shara Bey.

“You’re selling yourself short.”

Rey stops and whirls on her heel.

“I’m _not_ ,” she hisses. “And what would _you_ know of it anyway? The child of _royalty_. A _prince_.”

“Rey, I’m not a prince.”

 _“Of course you fucking are, Ben,”_ she snarls. “Snoke said it. I was there, I _heard_ him. You are the heir to the Alderaanian throne.”

“Rey, only a girl can…”

“And you are the grandson of a former Queen of Naboo.”

“An _elected_ monarch.”

 _“Shut up,”_ she spits. “I don’t want to _hear_. I don’t want to hear any more about _how much you know, Ben._ How much you know _that I don’t.”_

And at last Ben understands her, as the same feeling he’d sensed from her earlier as they’d trained – shame – radiates from Rey like a solar flare.

“ _Say_ something smart then,” she snarls again. _“Go on.”_

Ben stays silent. He knows this. He’s lived it for years.

 _“Fucking say something!”_ she yells as she thumps his chest with her closed fist and thumps it _hard._

He watches her face redden, her eyebrows almost touch in fury and resentment as she bores more fury into him like a laser drill through steel.

_“Fucking tell me something else you know, Ben! I’m so interested!”_

Ben can feel his lower lip tremble as his heart aches for her, just like it had earlier as he’d realized just how much she felt betrayed by Skywalker – and for not the first time – as Maz had offered Ben his grandfather’s recovered saber.

“Because you’re so _clever_ ,” she hisses again, as she thumps him once more with both fists this time.

Ben can see fresh tears spill down her face and he hears her voice cracking in places as the lump in her throat becomes something he can feel too. Not just because of their bond but because it causes him nothing but pain to watch her collapse like this. The woman who’d brought him here, to where he felt he was at last finding a peace he hadn’t known in years. The woman he loved, who was now breaking down in front of him just when he wanted her most.

“Because you know _so much_ ,” she sobs, her voice growing weaker now with the tears that have started to fall from her eyes. “Because people have _bothered_ to train _you._ And for _years._ Because they _loved_ you and they _cared_ enough about you to do it! To _stay_ with you. To _teach_ you. To _believe_ in you and who you one day _could become.”_

Rey barely gets the last words of it out. Ben takes her fists and holds them tight. Her body goes limp as sobbing wracks it so much that she could no longer yell or thump at him even if he _was_ to let her go.

Ben draws her arms in to his chest and then wraps his own around her, folding her upper body into his enormous torso like a parent would do to a tiny child.

“ _I_ believe in you, Rey,” he whispers as he holds her tight and she sobs into his chest. “Because I would not be the man I am today without you.”

Ben closes his eyes and gently rocks her as he feels her sobbing eventually subside. But it does not happen quickly and even when he feels the quaking stop through the muscles of her chest she still trembles. But the fury in her has burnt out, as he knew it would. This is all too familiar to Ben.

Still holding her, he reaches out through the Force to feel her and then he gilds her edges with his Force-shield in an effort to start to return her energy to a point where she can speak to him again. After a few minutes of this, he senses a path.

“Are you okay?” he breathes, still holding her tight and with his head still pressed firmly to her hair so that she doesn’t have to look at him if she doesn’t yet want to.

“You just… _know_ so much,” she murmurs, her voice still thick with tears.

“But that’s _okay,_ isn’t it?” he breathes without moving, and still holding her tight and close. “I know so much so that I can teach you everything _you’ve_ got to know. _Right?_ Because Rey, we have to do this _together.”_

“I don’t want to lead.”

“You don’t have to.”

“You will do it?”

“If you want me to, I will.”

“I want to be able to _choose.”_

Ben sighs. “Sometimes, we don’t always have choices, Rey.”

“I _want_ choices. I don’t want to be told what to do.”

“No one is telling you that, Rey,” he breathes, still holding her close. “But sometimes we have to be the ones to step up if there is no one else.”

“Destiny?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t believe in that.”

“Then maybe,” Ben murmurs, very gently, just in case, but sensing that she’s ready to accept what he knows she needs to hear now. What the galaxy needs her to hear. “Maybe it’s time to _revise_ that. To open your mind to something that’s _new._ To _learn_ something, Rey.”

For several minutes she doesn’t speak. He knows he has connected with her. He knows that she is calmer. He can feel her chest rise and fall at a speed he recognizes as more like her own in moments when they’re alone. She is almost peaceful again. He continues to hold her against him and to press his face against her hair until he feels her tell him she’s ready to stop.

At last, he feels her body start to move again. She is rubbing her nose against his cowl. He frowns, but it’s a good frown.

“Um,” he starts, softly. “Rey, are you wiping snot on me?”

Through the bond he senses her smile.

“No,” she says, but he can definitely sense a lie in there somewhere.

“I just washed that you know,” he says quietly, teasing.

He feels her smile broaden.

“We’ll just have to go back to the lake and wash it again,” she says, her voice still a little thick but definitely brightening as she rubs her nose against his cowl again.

“Far out,” he breathes, as he nuzzles her hair. “Fuck you, honey. Fuck you.”

Ben feels Rey wriggle beneath him and he loosens his grip so she can work her head out from his embrace and lift it up to look at him.

“Wow,” he murmurs, smiling. “You look like shit.”

Rey thumps him gently in the center of his chest.

“You wanna go back now?” he asks, softly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”

But she doesn’t move yet.

“Ben?”

“Mm?”

“Thanks.”

“I _love_ you,” he breathes. _“Don’t forget it.”_

Rey gives him a wry smile and then wipes the back of her nose with her hand.

“I’d kiss you, but I’m kind of a gross mess of snot.”

Ben cups her face with both his hands and kisses her deeply, finishing by sucking gently at her lower lip as she opens her mouth to take a breath, nose still thick from crying. At the end of it he pulls away and watches as she wipes her cheeks free of tears with both sleeves. She’s never been a good crier.

“Come with me,” he says.

Together they walk back to the lake to wash. It’s not far. The shadows are growing long. The afternoon has elapsed and the sun is much lower in the sky than when they’d been out here at noon, bathing, fucking, conversing and sunning themselves on the slates by the water.

The air on the shore by the lake is much milder now, although not quite cold. They hear flurrgs croaking as they approach the bank. When Ben crouches to the water’s surface the nearest noises cease but Rey can still hear their deep calls in the distance as she, too, crouches down and cups the clean, cold water in her palms. She splashes her face.

Ben wets his palms and then wipes them against his snot-streaked cowl, beginning to rub away the marks.

“Maz probably hates me now,” Rey says.

The sound of her voice is frightfully loud, echoing across the still water. Even the flurrgs have been startled. Rey notices the croaking in the distance has stopped and now the sounds of the water as they continue to dip their hands into it is the only echo they can hear.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ben starts. “I was a fucking brat to her when I was a kid but today she’s been…”

Ben freezes.

 _What?_ Rey thinks in response through the bond as she senses his sudden caution, and the panic.

_Don’t move. Get your saber._

_What? How?_

_You know how. Do it. Now._

With no idea what he’s sensed, she obeys him. Ben’s instincts are likely to be much more attuned now than hers, still too wracked with emotion to sense clearly through the Force and she doesn’t need to be told a third time.

Reaching out, Rey locates the saber and imagines it in her own hand as she slowly extends her open palm until she feels the familiar weight of the hilt land there. She clasps it.

_Stormtroopers._

_“What?”_ Rey breathes aloud, as in her shock she’s unable to keep from vocalizing.

_Follow my lead._

He moves like a shadow and she doesn’t hesitate. In a flash they have crept back to the dark cover of the forest. Rey has to run to keep up with his vast strides and it’s only moments before they’re back at camp. Maz is already on her feet, blaster in hand.

“Bury it,” he orders, as he collects Vader’s saber and signals the campfire, but Maz is already kicking earth up and over the smoldering coals.

 _“Ben,”_ Rey says, as first she collects the electronics and then her book before grabbing Ben’s arm with urgency. He turns to face her. _“What in the fuck is going on?”_

“The First Order are here,” he says, bluntly. “On Takodana. They’ve found us.”

_“What?!”_

“Yeah,” he says in response. “Do that for five minutes and you’ll be where I am now.”

_“We need to get back to the ship!”_

_“Are you fucking kidding me?”_ he yells at her, cracking at last. “It’s a _fucking transport_. It has _no_ defensive capabilities _whatsoever_.”

And Ben suddenly feels it. The panic he’s created in so many who’ve fallen before him. _Him._ The right-hand man of the First Order. And in utter terror he unclips his saber and dumps it on the ground in resignation. “Rey, we are _already dead!”_

“Fuck you, Ben, _we are not_ ,” she levels. “So pick that fucking thing up off the ground _right now_ because I _cannot_ do this without you.”

“ _If_ you have finished,” Maz says pointedly. “I can buy you some time.”

“You’re coming with us,” Rey says categorically. “You can buy time later. I’m utterly convinced we’ll need it.”

2\. Past. Mid Rim.

_Give. Me. Everything._

The scream pierced through all that he’d ever felt or known. It was primal. Animal. An inferno of instinct and reason. And it was a sound that could have come from only one place. A place he knew. A place of indescribable realism and far beyond the owner’s control.

_I’ll find you, Poe_

It was only a sound that could emerge from utter physical despair. A tangible, bodily agony but one expressed through the intangible, abstract lens of hope. A sound at once incapable - of bearing - and yet utterly able of breaking the cause of it. Of holding it to account. Because the owner of that sound mattered to _others_ and right now, it was to Poe.

 _“No!”_ he cried, as he felt Rey’s pain through the Force. “No, no, _no!”_

 

3\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“Poe?”

Through the fog of the vision, he hears it again.

_“Poe?”_

The voice is familiar but he can’t quite place it now. The scene before him is still clouded by another overlaid. A vision of his past, and the pain in his head is gut wrenching. He feels as though something will surely split down the center but he can’t tell whose. His? Hers?

 _“Poe,”_ the voice says for a third time. “Hey, man come _on_. _Buddy_. Snap _out_ of it.”

And then Poe feels cold and wet.

Blinking, the vision fades and colours and forms sharpen in front of him as Poe is returned to the Kashyyyk jungle and feels the water drip down his face, beneath the collar of his shirt and down his chest. He grasps for the ring on the chain around his neck as he stares at Finn, who is still holding the flask from which Poe’s just been doused.

“I’m sorry, man, but…”

 _“Rey,”_ Poe breathes.

4\. Present. Takodana.

“Land mines,” Maz says, breathing quickly as she pulls a handheld console from one of her own haversacks. “I know where they are. We can avoid them.”

“Can you funnel with them?” Rey asks.

“Yes, of course,” Maz responds, as she stuffs the console into a smaller haversack that already contains some meagre supplies including a med kit, food and water canisters.

“Okay,” Rey says. “That’s good. Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“So, you’re serious?” Ben checks again. “We’re really going for the transport?”

“I just don’t see what other option we’ve got,” Rey replies, having heard his unsubtle assessment of the substandard ship and understanding his trepidation. “We can only hide here for so long. And if they really know we’re here, we know the worst.”

Rey stops short of saying it aloud. No one needs reminding of the destructive capabilities of a Dreadnaught. Plus, as Ben had already informed them, it was highly likely that in his absence the First Order had completed the planned miniaturization of the tech that had made Starkiller Base the pinnacle of genocidal weaponry.

“Well, then,” Rey says with a sigh. “Let’s go.”

“Rey,” Ben says, gripping her arm. “Take this.”

Ben hands her Vader’s saber.

“This weapon is more precise than the one you’ve been using. Especially since its repair. There is a chance that yours may fail. You need _this._ You need it more than I do.”

“Ben,” Rey breathes, shocked.

She knows how much the weapon means to him. After all, this has not only called to him from as far away as Kashyyyk but has been crafted by the hand of his relative. And not just any relative. A grandfather he’s grown to idolize. And she’s seen the memories in his head. The alter in his chambers where he’d prayed in the past. The precious relic he’d kept; the damaged helmet of Darth Vader.

She gazes at Ben and she knows he can read her. Knows he can sense that she understands how much this means to him. That she should have _this_ saber. It is Ben’s way of protecting her, not that she needs it. But perhaps she does. Is she growing arrogant? She shakes her head. Rey knows she is more than grateful to Ben.

“Thank you,” she says. “Ben, _thank you.”_

“Lead,” he says, ready.

Maz shoulders her haversack, blaster still in hand.

Rey begins the careful trek back through the shadowed forest. Back to where she’d docked the transport on the fringe of the lake and in the shadows of Maz’s ruined castle.

From over her shoulder she calls to them.

“Follow me.”

`          

5\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“What about her?” Finn says shakily, fear lacing his voice.

“Something’s wrong,” Poe says slowly. “Something’s… _really_ wrong.”

 _“What?”_ Finn says again. “Poe, you have to _tell us.”_

The Resistance has already started the prep for dinner. Chewie has lit a campfire and Finn and Rose are in the midst of alternately gathering fresh water from the underground sump.

Poe sits down on one of the logs that surround the fire. He dumps his head in his hands, wracking his brain.

“Urgh, what did she _say?”_ he cries out in frustration, massaging his temples with his fingertips.

Poe remembers how tired from lack of sleep he’d been that morning. It had clouded everything including his judgement but his memory of the early part of the day had also been affected.

She’d wanted to take Kylo Ren to Takodana. She’d wanted to take the transport, but to cloak it. Had _that_ failed? She’d modified it, taking the cloaking device from the Falcon. Had the re-fit overloaded it? If it had, with a failed cloak they would have been seen for sure.

“Fuck,” Poe breathes, shaking his head.

 _“What,_ Poe?” Finn says again, concerned. _“What is it?_ What should I do?”

 _“Urgh,”_ Poe cries again in frustration. _“I don’t know how to do this_. I just…”

 _“It’s the Force,”_ Finn says slowly, remembering Han. “Isn’t it? _You can use the Force,_ can’t you? _You can sense Rey._ Can’t you?”

“I don’t know _how,”_ Poe moans, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know how this _works.”_

“Me either,” Finn concedes, thinking again of Han. “I know how it _doesn’t_ work, though.”

“All I can do,” Poe admits, feeling pathetic, “is _sense_. I can’t _see_ anything.”

“What should we do?”

Poe thinks back again to the morning. There was something else. Something else she’d said that he was forgetting. She had been worried about him. Why? She’d said something about the jungle. Something about… waning? _Who_ was waning? And had she _said_ that? Or had he picked it up? Was this another thing he could _sense?_ Fuck, this was confusing.

 _Fucking hell, Rey,_ he thinks in desperation. _What the fuck do you want me to do?_

 

6\. Present. Takodana.

The trio have made slow progress. Not only are they trying to move silently but also Rey and Ben move with only half a mind on the task, the other engaged by sensing through the Force the movement of stormtroopers across the planet’s surface and of course Hux, who must be orchestrating all of this from somewhere close by. That is unless he’s out-sourced it, which Ben had suggested, however this was doubtful. Hux had a personal vendetta against Kylo Ren and, just like Snoke, would come for him. It was only a matter of time and now it seemed Ben’s time was up.

Rey continues the steady, careful pace she’s set, sensing both Ben and Maz not far behind her. And then, at last, something else. But it’s further away than this planet. Ben senses it too.

“Swap with me,” Rey murmurs to him.

Ben strides to walk alongside her.

“Poe?”

“I think so, yes.”

“He’s sensed you,” Ben comments, moderately impressed. “Let me know when you’re done.”

Rey slows to fall in step behind Ben. With him leading, it’s much easier to focus her mind on the thing that tugs at it now.

_Fucking hell, Rey._

_Poe._

_What the fuck do you want me to do?_

Rey reaches her arm out to Ben and places a palm to his back to guide her as her vision clouds and she can see Poe now.

_The First Order are here. On Takodana. They have found us. You all need to come here with supplies. We’re going to change the plan and take them from here._

_What?!_

_Please just do it, Poe. I haven’t got much time._

_Everyone?_

_Yes._

_And ships? What ships?_

_Everything._

_Falcon, X-wing?_

_And the Silencer._

_We can’t break into that, the tech’s too good._

_You can. He’ll open it. Call to me when you’re ready._

 

7\. Present. Kashyyyk.

“Oh, man, this is _not good,”_ Poe mutters, as he stands and starts to pace.

“Okay,” he says to Finn. “Get everyone here. _Now.”_

Poe rounds on Chewie.

“I’ll need you on the Falcon. I’ll take the X-wing. Finn can have the Silencer. Deal?”

Chewie brays.

“Yeah, I know,” Poe admits. “But for fuck’s sake, we’re going there to _rescue_ him. He’ll _get over_ it.”

 

8\. Present. Takodana.

Rey tugs at Ben’s back. He turns.

“It’s getting dark,” she whispers. “But I think we’re nearly there.”

“Yes,” Ben murmurs, and he cocks his jaw to a portion of forest ahead of them. “Beyond that. Two stormtroopers and the transport. They’re arming it with explosives now.”

“In here,” Maz mutters. “Follow me.”

She winds through a thicket of bracken.

“Fuck,” Rey breathes. “ _Could_ this be any more noisy?”

 _I can’t sense anything here,_ Ben thinks through the bond.

 _Well that’s lucky,_ she thinks back, _because we sound like a herd of fucking Savrips._

As they reach the edge of the bracken, Maz scampers to a bank of dense foliage and disappears briefly. Then she pokes her head out.

“Quickly,” she whispers, waving them forward with her open palm. _“In.”_

Rey ducks beneath the branches and finds herself in a low tunnel tall enough for Maz to walk down, but Rey has to stoop and Ben is so tall he’s crawling. Rey raises an eyebrow.

 _You know, this has potential,_ she thinks to him, as she watches him down on all fours. _Ever been a sub to a Grey Jedi dom?_

Ben winces as his knee hits another half-buried rock.

_You’ll pay for that one, kid. And I’m the dom._

_“You wish_ ,” she says, as she turns and continues down the tunnel as she tries to catch up to Maz, who is leading the way with a lamp in her hand.

 

9\. Present. Kashyyyk.

Poe takes a deep breath. He will _not_ be popular after this.

“Okay,” he starts, breathing out. “I will _not_ be popular after this.”

“Just tell us the plan,” Rose deadpans. “Are we getting out of here? No one is feeling good.”

“Well, that’s the good news,” Poe says, smiling although he’s sure it looks pretty phony. “But yeah, we are. We’re leaving now.”

 _“What?”_ Connix says. “But sir, that’s not enough time to prepare…”

“We gotta do what we gotta do,” Poe says, raising a hand to silence her. “We have _no_ time, I know. But this is a rescue. And, at the end of it, hopefully this is also our ticket to a decent base.”

A murmur ripples through the small group of twenty or so. Poe gives them a moment to reflect and then continues.

“We have three ships.”

“Four,” Connix corrects.

“Ah, no, it’s actually three,” Poe admits uncomfortably.

“Where’s the fourth?”

Poe can’t put it off any longer.

“Rey left with Kylo Ren this morning on the transport.”

 _“What?!”_ Rose exclaims. “And nobody told us that?”

“I’m telling you now,” Poe sighs. “They’re on Takodana and they can’t get out.”

“Why not?” Connix asks.

Poe sighs again.

“The First Order are there.”

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Rose says, stepping forward. “You are going to send us – just the handful that’s left – to a planet we don’t know, to fight the First Order? You’d better _hope_ you’re also calling allies.”

Poe grimaces.

“Oh, yeah, and may the Force be with us and all that.”

 

10\. Present. Takodana.

With his head still full of curses, from the pain of crawling across the uneven floor of the tunnel, at last Ben reaches the end of it and can finally stand in the place where the mouth of it opens out into a surprisingly cavernous space, which branches off into several smaller chambers and another low tunnel. The walls have been boarded to prevent earth slips and around the curved perimeter an odd assortment of wooden chests and metal crates are stacked at random intervals. There is also a pit in the center where a fire could be safely stoked.

“Smuggler den,” Ben observes, recognizing the features as ones he knows from travelling with his father years ago.

“Still in use, although not as often these days,” Maz elaborates. “It is well hidden and will keep us safe for as long as we need to be kept so.”

She has already floored her haversack and is beginning to unload an assortment of cooking items, the canisters of water and the med kit.

“We need to know where they are,” Rey says, returning them to purpose.

“Ah, yes,” Maz says. “This way.”

She leaves the supplies she’s brought with her on the floor for the minute and leads them down the second tunnel. Ben sighs as he kneels again. Rey gives him a very slow wink.

After several minutes of moving Maz stops them, pressing her forefinger to her lips in a shushing gesture.

“Quietly,” she mouths, as then she slowly treads the remainder of tunnel before reaching out and pulling back more foliage as Rey and Ben peer out to a view of the lake, darkening now in the twilight, and beyond it the transport.

They can see the two stormtroopers that Ben had earlier sensed. They are standing on opposite sides of the docked ship, blasters away and looking fairly disengaged with their apparent task of guarding it.

“Why the fuck would he get them doing _that?”_ Ben wonders, baffled by how senseless it seemed to arm a ship with hidden explosives and then man it.

Rey frowns.

“You’re right,” she says. “What’s that about?”

“They want it to blow. They want a distraction.”

“Shit,” Rey breathes, turning to stare at him. “Can you sense more?”

“No,” Ben says slowly. “Not _here_ at least. They _are_ here, but they’re spread out. These two are the closest at the moment.”

“What are we going to do?” Rey frets.

“We’ll need to alternate a watch,” Ben decides. “You and I will monitor them overnight. Perhaps also tomorrow. We need to know patterns. We can’t plan anything until we’re confident we know how they’re thinking. _What_ they’re thinking.”

“Do you want to go back in?” Maz asks them, very quietly.

Rey looks at Ben who nods.

“Yes,” Rey says. “Please.”

Slowly, Maz drops the foliage back into place, to conceal the mouth of the entrance from the outside, and then she leads them back down the tunnel with the lamp. Rey and Ben move in silence, each still reaching out through the Force to continue the search of their surroundings, monitoring the life forms and staying alert for any proximity changes.

“Bedding is here,” Maz calls, softly. “Please help yourself to what you need. And choose a small den. We will use this big one to eat in but the smaller ones are good for sleeping. Nice and warm.”

“Thank you,” Rey says, as she opens one of the crates Maz has just singled out and begins removing enough blankets and paddings for both her and Ben.

“Where do you want to sleep?” she asks him.

“You choose,” he replies, somewhat vaguely and she knows he is too immersed in the task of watching their surroundings to really care where he ends up, because he probably won’t sleep anyway.

Rey does a quick search and finally settles on a small den free of boxes and crates. She spreads the padding out first across the bare, brown earth and then places blankets over the top. As she kneels above them, flattening the crinkles out with her palms, suddenly she realizes just how tired she is. Perhaps she could lie down, just for a few minutes. It might help her to focus her mind as she searches.

It is a strange place this. Now that she really looks at the earth it isn’t even brown at all. The shadows are dark. They creep up the curved walls, and over the roof of the hollow above her head, and as she rolls her body over to look at the ground below the padding of the makeshift bed again she notices that it, too, is shadowed.

_Clever girl._

Rey sits up. The light from Maz’s torch is out. She must have fallen asleep. She stands up, waiting for a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark until she can make out the grey forms of the shapes in front of her. Just to make sure, she runs her hands along the walls of the den as she walks out into the larger space where the firepit is. Strange that there are no embers. And no smell of smoke, or food.

_Clever girl._

Rey sits up. The den is lit by the warm light that pulses from Maz’s lamp. Rey blinks. The earth is brown. No shadows creep about the walls or beneath the floor below the bedding. She stands up, disoriented. Slowly, she drags the bedding out of the small den and back into the larger one, where Ben and Maz now sit as Maz stirs something in a pot above the firepit.

“Are you okay?” Ben asks, frowning.

“No,” she says, slowly. “I think I fell asleep.”

“You dreamt,” he says, sensing. “Of what?”

Rey pulls the bedding right up to Ben so that the edges of it touch him. Then she crouches down on top of it and snuggles against him.

Ben shifts so that now he too sits on the padding of the bed with a leg either side of her. He pulls her in and wraps his arms around her arms and chest, his face nuzzling her neck.

“Tell me,” he says, concerned.

Rey watches Maz as she continues to stir whatever is in the small pot. It smells good.

“Soup,” Maz says smiling, sensing her question.

“There was just a _voice,”_ Rey says, staring at the pot, mesmerized by Maz’s hand as it circles hypnotically.

Ben frowns.

“Did you recognize it?”

“No.”

“Male or female?”

“Male.”

“And you didn’t recognize it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she says, slowly.

“And what did it say?” Ben asks, quietly.

_“Clever girl.”_

Ben pauses his search of the Force for a moment to now search Rey more thoroughly. She is frightened. The vision has shaken her. This is a feeling Ben knows and he pulls her in tighter, nuzzling again at the side of her neck with his cheek and nose.

“Darkness, Rey,” he breathes, as he continues to hold her close.

“What?” she breathes, alarmed, and turning her body around in an effort to face him.

Ben’s mouth forms a grim line.

“They have begun to call you,” Ben concedes.

 _“What?”_ she says again, frowning. _“Who?”_

“Don’t let it be a weakness.”

Maz begins to serve the soup and they consume the hot broth quickly. Ben gathers the dishes this time and stows them in a small crate. In the morning they may be able to find a place to clean them but for now they can wait.

Maz has made a small bed for herself in one of the smaller dens near the entrance. After wishing them a safe night she turns in and Rey and Ben are left alone by the dying fire, now just down to a few glowing embers which throw out large, eerie shadows across the contours of the larger burrow.

“Poe said he would try to reach out when the Resistance is ready to leave,” Rey murmurs, breaking the silence that has descended in the wake of the meal and the brief conversation about Rey’s vision.

“Mm,” Ben murmurs. “It shouldn’t be long.”

“Can you sense anything?” she asks.

“No,” he says, as he nuzzles her again and presses his lips softly to the skin behind her ear.

Rey leans back into him, feeling his hands begin to creep slowly below her garments to find her skin. She smiles as she feels his warm touch.

“Ben,” she breathes, as she tilts her head back, feeling the pleasure he’s creating in her as his fingers start to brush lightly over one of her nipples. “Who’s begun to call me?”

Ben begins to roll her nipple gently between his thumb and forefinger.

“There will probably be several,” he murmurs, “who have sensed your power growing in the Dark side of the Force.”

“Did this happen to you?” she asks quietly, as he begins to kiss at her neck and behind her ear.

“Yes,” he breathes. _Can you take these off?_

Leaning back into him, Rey unfastens her belt and slips her outer garments over her head. Then she wriggles out of her lower ones entirely, leaving on just the lighter upper ones. Gently, he bends her knees so that her feet rest flat on the bedding before beginning to stroke the skin of one of her outer thighs with his fingertips.

“When did it start?” she asks, as she feels his hand move below her thigh and to the folds of her labia as his other hand starts to gently work at her nipple.

“When I was a boy,” he breathes, as he hears her breath shudder before slipping a finger inside her. _You’re so wet._

Rey tilts her head back. _Are you hard?_

_Yes._

Ben begins to fuck Rey slowly with two of his fingers.

“What happened?” she murmurs, her speech mildly affected by the soft beat of his hand as it shakes the breath she exhales.

“Not unlike what was said to you in the beginning,” he says, his own breathing growing heavy as he watches the curves of her body quiver with the beat of his hand as now he also extends his thumb, so that it can start to rub at her clit with each stroke.

Rey’s breath is ragged now as she tilts her head back and Ben longs to take one of her hard nipples between his teeth and gently bite it. He considers flipping her over but he wants her to come first so he rolls it again between his thumb and forefinger, and feels her hips begin to wriggle. She is close.

 _“Fuck,_ Ben,” she whispers, as he drives his hand faster and squeezes with the other at her nipple while his tongue licks at the sweet spot behind her ear. He feels her come around his hand and push back against him before doubling over as the climax ripples through her body.

As Ben feels her muscles soften, he lays her down on her back and kisses her mouth as his hand finds his cock and he guides it inside her. She pulls her mouth away as she feels him enter her slowly, and as she tilts her head back she looks up at him. Knowing he likes her to watch him.

Ben fucks her, sometimes leaning in to her to suck at her nipples or bite at her neck and sometimes sitting back to watch his cock in her cunt.

 _Ben_ , she calls to him through the bond as he feels himself verging. _I can sense them on Kashyyyk._

“Holy fuck,” he mutters, not needing _that_ now.

“Sorry,” she breathes, blocking what she senses for the moment.

Ben stares again at his cock as it disappears inside her again and again until he’s back to verging.

_I want to fucking come inside you._

_Yes._

Ben gasps as he drives for a final few times and then spills into her before crumpling forward, nuzzling her neck before pulling himself out of her and rolling onto his back. Spent.

Slowly Rey stands, walks shakily to a crate she’d noticed earlier and from it finds cloths which she uses to wipe herself clean before beginning to dress her lower body again, but just in undergarments. The rest could be thrown on fairly quickly if they needed to move fast in the night.

Rey takes a couple of sips of water from one of the canisters and then returns to where Ben lies, eyes half closed.

“Did you sense Poe?”

Ben sighs.

“No.”

Lying down on her back, Rey closes her eyes and reaches out through the Force for several minutes before speaking.

“Can you open the access panel on the Silencer?”

Ben frowns.

“Fuck,” he mutters. His brain has almost ground to a halt now. “ _Can_ I…? I actually don’t know… It needs a… heat signature… but… I can probably just…”

Rey waits.

“Okay,” he says quietly, after several moments. “Did they get in?”

Rey pauses.

“Yes,” she says. “But you won’t be pleased.”

“Why?” he asks, his dark eyes narrowing. “What’d they do to it?”

“Finn’s the pilot.”

“Fucking hell.”

Rey smiles and then straddles him. She brings her mouth slowly down to his and cups his face as she kisses him deeply, feeling his mouth open to kiss her just as deeply in return. She looks again into Ben’s dark eyes and then snuggles down to his chest, resting her cheek against it. His heart is slowing. His muscles are relaxed and supple, warm and yielding. Ben’s hands gently cup her body. He feels sleepy.

“Rey,” he murmurs, “Don’t let me fall asleep.”

“I’ll take the first watch,” she says, smiling. “You’re already gone.”

And he was, snoring softly as she lay back down into his chest and returned her attention to the Force.

 

11\. Present. Tashtor Sector.

“That will do, Captain.”

Hux bounces on the balls of his feet as the lead ship completes its hyperspace jump. The stars of the Tashtor sector become fixed points again and the glint of green that is the planet Takodana is prominent in the starscape before him.

As Hux gazes out through the vast viewport of the bridge, it strikes him as odd. How he has somehow, in all his years of commandeering military missions, never really appreciated it before, now that he knows it is about to be gone forever.

“It really _is_ a beautiful part of the galaxy, isn’t it?” he says. “Such a pity, to have to break it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I pulled an all-nighter to get this new chapter done in time for Reylo-Week-2018 and in response to 'Day 7 - Destiny'. #2 refers to the scene in TLJ where Rey is being tortured by Snoke and Poe senses her when she screams in pain on the Supremacy, which is when in the films you sort of realise/think/suspect Rey/Poe are Force-connected (brother/sister!!). I've been thinking a lot about Rey and Ben and the wolf theory so really like the word ‘den’ to describe their underground hiding place on Takodana. Finally feel like I found a use for Rose and Connix in this story that wasn't just tokenistic but hopefully not at the expense of making Poe look like an incompetent douche. Love a bit of Poe. Feedback welcome as always :)


	12. Kashyyyk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night has fallen on Takodana. Rey and Ben are bunkered down in the smuggler den Maz located, waiting for the Resistance and monitoring the movements of the First Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is so canon-divergent and incorporates a tonne of just well theories but in this chapter let’s assume Finn did pick up something from Poe along the lines of flying. Was it leaving the FO? Was it after? It’s alluded to in this chapter that somewhere along the line Poe has taught Finn to fly. Go with it! Somebody needs to! Lol

1\. Past. Kashyyyk.

“Okay, I can _do_ this” Finn said, exhaling a deep breath as he punched in again. “Override codes… override codes…”

Poe and Rose watched him try and fail to enter yet another sequence of numbers into the external keypad Chewie had lent them from the Falcon.

Poe wanted to back Finn in his decision to try this – _before_ asking Ren to just open the damn door through the Force – but heavily doubted it would ever prove effective.

Rey had already tried and failed to re-purpose tech today on something not even that obsolete when you really thought about it, and when Poe thought about it she’d been right to try. The production dates between the wiring on the transport and the cloaking device on the Falcon had been pretty damn close in his opinion. But the chronologies of Luke’s X-wing and the Silencer were _way_ bigger than that, at _least_ a couple of decades in fact, if Poe’s done the math right.

Finn was wasting their time and Poe hadn't had the heart to break it to him, understanding it was ego getting in the way.

“I dunno, Finn, I’ve got a _bad_ feeling about this,” Poe said, trying to be gentle but nonetheless grimacing and still unable to tell Finn to get over the grudge he still held, for both the sake of the Resistance _and_ for Rey.

“I just know _one_ of these has _gotta_ stick,” Finn said, trying yet again. “These override codes don’t change. There’s only so many number sequences. The First Order can make it _look_ fancier but numbers still only go from _zero_ to _nine_ …”

Rose gave Poe a meaningful look.

“Yeah, I _get_ it,” Poe mumbled under his breath so Finn wouldn’t hear.

“Can’t you just _ask_ her?” Rose murmured. “If you’re _subtle_ about it he’ll never even _realise_.”

Poe looked at her.

“You know, _now_ I see why you two get along,” he said, grinning as he turned his back on the starship to try to do what he’d done earlier.

To somehow reach out again to Rey.

 

2\. Present. Takodana.

Gently, she tugs his cowl up higher, not wanting to wake him yet. By the light of her crystals she is finding triangles. There is one below each of his pecs if she traces down his sternum, and then moves the smooth edge of the small violet rock along the acute angle that the first of his abs makes on its way back up to meet the shadowed line she began on.

As Rey traces further down the center of his stomach, there are several more below. Another isosceles under the first, but in its mirror image. A scalene, mirrored by the one on the other side of his abdomen. This one is furthest from where she is still nestled against Ben and on the same side as the firepit, which has inevitably burnt itself out.

And then of course there is the largest one, if she places the crystal against his still warm skin and moves it horizontally between his hip bones, to make the baseline. This one is equilateral, its apex made by the base of his dormant cock which she can still see, still exposed by the fastenings he’d not had time or bother to close before he’d fallen into a deep, post-coital sleep.

Rey moves the glowing stone to the center of this triangle, which parallels Ben’s sacrum.

_When the Grey Jedi Order rises with her…_

She watches the vertical movement of it sync with Ben’s diaphragm as the crystal moves involuntarily with his breath.

_…the compromise she brings as its leader will balance the galaxy with a new third Order…_

She listens to the sound of the breath as it leaves him, and then re-enters.

_…making a trilogy. A trinity of ideas._

She had listened to this, too, as they’d sat with Maz before Rey had fled and before she and Ben had sensed together that some kind of ambush had begun, although no one seemed to have come for them yet. Not even the Resistance, although Rey knew they were close to leaving Kashyyyk. She could sense it.

And as Rey’s mind drifts back to the memory, of how they’d all then fled for the cover of the smuggler den, she can at last sense something new in the Force. She shakes him.

“Ben?” she whispers.

He turns his face to the sound of her voice and she props herself up on an elbow as she brings her own face closer, shaking him again, more urgently this time.

_“Ben?”_

His eyes open sleepily as he scrunches them slightly, clearing his vision. The den is dark but for the soft, multicolored lights emitting from the crystals, which Rey had earlier scattered on the earthen floor beside their bedding as she’d searched for her favorite, while the light from the fire’s embers had died.

“Mm?” he mumbles.

The glow of the small crystal, which still rests where Rey had placed it carefully in the center of Ben’s lower abdomen, casts a faint grey hue up his body. She stares at the way the elongated shadows it casts distort the forms of his upper torso and face. Distracted, her mind wanders back to the lake, and then further back to the forest.

_Don’t let it be a weakness._

“I’m _sorry_ ,” she whispers.

“What?” he says, frowning and still mumbling from a mind still clouded by sleep.

Rey collects the crystal in her fist and snuggles closer to Ben, laying her head by his on the padding they’d earlier rolled to make a kind of pillow and placing the crystal in the small crevice of negative space between them, just below their chins.

“For what I did earlier,” she confesses, as she traces her finger over the stone’s smooth surface, avoiding Ben’s gaze. “For the things I said. And for hitting you.”

Ben sighs.

“It’s okay,” he breathes, lifting her chin gently with his own finger and then pressing the tip of his nose to hers. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop fighting like that.”

“What?” she says, now frowning too. This is not the reply she’d expected.

Rey had expected Ben to do what he always did lately, which was to console her. Somehow, since they’d re-emerged from the lake, it was now he who was tempering her emotions. She thinks back to her scramble to follow him into the forest from the river slates by the shore. She hadn’t been ready. Her stuff had been as scattered as her thoughts and she’d noted then how unlike her it was to behave like that. To be driven not by purpose, but whim.

Wasn’t this how _Ben_ had always behaved? When he’d first found her in the forest, below which they hid now, as he’d seen the map in her head and suddenly changed his mind, taking her instead and not the droid? And that had continued right up until the lake, when he’d nearly crushed the shell in the palm of his hand at the thought she didn’t love him enough to care about whether or not he lived or died.

But Rey could also _feel_ it. She didn’t need to _think_ back. She didn’t _need_ to dredge up every time the Dark in her had reared to change the course of her actions. Raising the starship from below the waves off Ahch-To, forcing Ben to re-watch himself killing his own father, and planting in his angered mind the thought that Ben himself was a weapon. She had _wanted_ to do all of those things.

And _this_ was the question now burning a hole in her head. Had the _Darkness_ done this, or had _she_? Had she gone there _willingly?_ Or had it _seduced_ her? It was the _former_ that her Master had suggested on the island and _not_ the latter. And this, she thinks now, is what Ben means when he suggests that they will _always_ fight each other. Because their relationship mirrored this struggle. _Their_ struggle. To always grapple with these things.

Rey stares at him. By the violet light, she can see his eyes have woken. His pupils, fully dilated, are black like the underground. But in them Rey can see the crystal’s glow reflected as though the center of each contains a galaxy of its own, dense with the lights of grey star systems.

“Why not?” Rey breathes.

“You already know,” Ben says softly, pressing his nose to hers again and gazing back into her wide eyes. “You’re _right_.”

“About what?” she urges. _“Which one is it?”_

“It’s the one you _choose_ , Rey.”

“That’s _not_ an answer.”

“But it _is_ ,” he says, leaning closer to brush his lips over hers. “It is the _only_ answer.”

She was pressed so close against him that even in his sleep he’d been able to hear her thoughts through the bond, as she’d turned part of her mind away from the search for the First Order’s movements above them, and instead back to the events of the afternoon.

And now, as he gazed into her wide eyes, with the hazel of them that he knew so well replaced by the ethereal grey from her crystal, he could still hear them.

Hers was a struggle he knew too well. He had lived it for most of his life. The path he had walked between aspiration and seduction was well trodden, and if _she_ could write the book on Grey Jedi, _he_ could write a _library_ on this.

He had yearned as a boy to be a pilot like his father, and longed as a youth to interact with the arrays of the galaxy, like his mother. But Snoke had lured him from both of these ambitions. When Ben had felt distanced – when they had been absent – Snoke had baited his hopes that they would return with promises of his own. That, one day, Ben would be so mighty that no one would refuse him. That no one would overlook him. And that no more would Ben go hungry for attention because the Darkness would reward and fill him _always_.

_Clever girl._

Ben understood it better now. Sometimes sleep had a way of doing that, of sifting the shit from the shi-shok. The Darkness was beginning to charm its way into Rey and he can sense why, as gently he takes the hand still playing with the crystal and holds it as he thinks back to how she’d thumped him with it earlier, in her fury at not him, but herself.

For not _knowing_ things. For not _understanding_ things. And somehow blaming _herself_ for that, even though she was more than capable of applying all of that knowledge and understanding as expertly as he was. Rey was more than accomplished in the ways of the Force, but she still didn’t believe it. And the Darkness had sensed it and called to her.

“Rey,” Ben says, as he pulls her hand in and places it flat against his chest so she can feel how much he means this. “You _must_ choose, or the choice will be made for you by the Darkness that has started to lure you.”

“The _voice_ …?”

“Of _course,”_ he breathes. _“Think about it._ The doubts about yourself that you had in the forest… What was later _spoken_ to you… Rey, this _is_ the seduction…”

Rey purses her lips as she turns her gaze away from Ben’s and to the hand which he has placed near his heart. She can feel the truth in him resonate through it, as well as the experience on which he draws to understand it, and attempt to transfer that understanding to her.

“That means I’ve got to lead?” she asks, quietly.

“That means you’ve got to _own_ the choice you make, whatever it is,” he urges. “If you want to lead it, do it. If you want to share it with me, do that. If you don’t want it at all, actively reject it but don’t _hesitate_. It will _be_ your downfall. And that _will_ end the galaxy.”

Rey sighs.

“I _want_ to lead it,” she whispers. “I _do_ want to.”

“But you’re afraid.”

“Yes.”

“You doubt yourself.”

_“Yes.”_

“Rey, _why?”_ Ben utters, gripping her hand again. “You are _exceptional_ in the ways of the Force. The way you fight, the way you sense and feel, and the power you have that not even _I had_ , let alone _knew of._ Rey, you know _more_ than I do about it and you have _taught me.”_

“You say it like it’s something meaningful Ben, but I haven’t _trained,_ I haven’t _practiced,_ I haven’t _earned_ any of it.”

“That is _fucking bullshit_ , Rey, and were you to show me the life forms responsible for planting that rubbish in your head, I would swear on my life to you that they each have less than five minutes left of their own.”

Rey gives him a tight smile.

“They’re all on Jakku,” she says, softly. “But I would never ask you, Ben, to exact revenge on my behalf.”

“You’ve done it for me.”

She smiles again.

“Still, Jakku is full of slaves.”

“Made so by the First Order. You know that, right?”

“I’ve suspected for a while,” she admits, quietly. “You’ve mentioned it before. Plutt had a debt.”

“Yes.”

“Which is why they took Poe. And why they took me. And why they killed our parents.”

“Yes.”

“This is still no reason to exact revenge. Plutt will get what’s owed to him. I _sense_ it.”

“Rey?”

“Yes?”

“Can _you_ feel _that?”_

“Oh, fuck, I almost forgot!” she cries before she remembers that it’s still the dead of the night and Maz is still asleep in a den, not so far away from where she and Ben still lie by the cold ashes of the fire. “Hux is in the system. With a fleet.”

“He’s waiting.”

“Oh, fuck, I’m _really sorry,_ Ben. I should have told you before, it’s why I woke you. I got _distracted_ …”

“Lucky there’s two of us,” Ben says with a soft smile, as he pulls the bedding up and around them.

“Please don’t make me too warm, I’ll fall asleep,” Rey mutters.

“It’s your _turn_ to sleep,” Ben murmurs, nuzzling her hair. “Or, we could do something else. I can think of some things…”

Rey nuzzles him, thinking back to when she’d watched him crawl, down on all fours, through the tunnels when they’d first arrived here.

“I can think of some things, too,” she says, softly.

As Ben feels her start to lick at one of his nipples, he pauses and she senses it.

“What is it?” she mumbles, without drawing her mouth away.

Ben takes a shaky breath as he feels her teeth scrape lightly against him.

“They’re moving.”

Abruptly, Rey stops and lifts her head to look at him as she, too, reaches out again in search.

“The stormtroopers by the transport,” he adds, before pausing again.

“They’re on a rotation,” Rey says, slowly. “They’re being replaced.”

“Hm,” Ben murmurs, and Rey feels him relax again.

“Do you think I’ve made the right decision?”

“What, leading?”

“No. Calling the Resistance here.”

Ben furrows his brow.

“Well, that decision was made _before_ we sensed Hux,” he begins. “So, yes. At the time it was the right one. But now, maybe…”

Rey stares at him. He is right. She had called on Poe to rescue them as, slowly, she’d sensed that the transport was what had alerted the First Order to their presence and therefore they had no means of escape, apart from the plan. But they needed _Finn_ for the plan.

In Rey’s initial panic, and as she’d tried her best to manage Ben’s, she had felt it was right to return to the transport’s relative safety without fully considering the broader strategy that was the plan, which was to occupy a _new_ ship, and certainly not fall back on the garbage they already had, especially if it was giving them away to the First Order.

Ben, who she knew was far more experienced at war games than her, had picked up on that inconsistency. He had known that in the face of the plan, the transport was now irrelevant and had rightly questioned her decision to return to it, Rey realized now.

“Okay, so I fucked that bit of it up but perhaps I sensed what _Maz_ would do,” she wonders, looking to Ben for advice. “Bunker us.”

“Possible,” he says, nodding in agreement. “But, Rey, you didn’t _fuck it up_. You _sensed_ the path but not yet the solution, that’s all. It happens. No one expects you to have _all_ of the answers _all_ of the time and, really, that’s not leadership anyway.”

Rey sighs. “So, I didn’t do the wrong thing?”

“Of course not,” he says softly, nuzzling her as he makes a subtle attempt to roll her onto her back.

Rey takes the bait and relaxes, reclining back onto the soft bedding as she feels him start to brush his lips over her neck, and the hollow of her clavicle, working in a downward direction as he loosens then removes the fabric of her upper undergarments.

“Should I call it off?” she asks, as she feels his hands lift her arms and gently position them above her head, palms up.

“No,” he murmurs. _Don’t move your hands from here._

_Okay._

“It will take them some time to arrive once they’ve left Kashyyyk,” he breathes, before she feels his lips hover lightly above one of her nipples and his hands work to loosen and remove her lower undergarments.

“How long?” she sighs in response, factoring in the likelihood that Poe surely wouldn’t take the direct route she and Ben had, given the notoriety of the fleet they were using, however motley it was.

Ben’s tongue begins to lightly flick.

_Remember not to move your hands._

Rey breathes out shakily as she watches him in the low grey light still cast by the violet-colored crystal beside them on the bedding, as he tongues one nipple hard and then the other before he answers her question.

“It could be awhile,” Ben says, softly. _As could this._

Rey grins as he looks at her, identifying as authority the thing she can see beginning to shape the edges of his gaze as she lets him begin to project a sense of domination over her with it, and enjoying it. Enjoying how the position he’s placed her arms in makes her feel prone to him. Enjoying how he looks as he starts to nibble at her distended nipples, and as her breathing moves her flesh to and from his mouth when he lets her go with his teeth.

 _Do you like this?_ he thinks through the bond as he continues to nibble softly.

 _Yes,_ she thinks back.

_Do you want me to hurt you?_

_No._

_Do you want me to stop?_

_No._

_What if I stopped?_

_“Please_ don’t,” she whispers.

“Are you _begging_ me?” he murmurs, under his breath and with disbelief clear in his voice.

And he does stop then, to stare up at her with a commanding expression that makes her quiver.

_Do you want me to keep going?_

“Yes,” she breathes.

_Then don’t beg unless I say._

Slowly, Rey nods as she breathes in and her chest rises again toward him, as he lowers his mouth to her once more and begins to suck at her. As his teeth bite gently down on her – and he feels her wriggle below him in response as her breath quickens – he looks up to meet her gaze. Her eyes are locked on him.

 _Keep watching,_ he thinks again, through the bond.

Ben lets go of her nipple and now he begins to kiss softly at the skin below her breasts and down one flank, feeling her breath hitch as he brushes his lips against her there and knowing it increases the tremors working their way through her body, making her wet. He looks up to her and her eyes are still on him as he licks first at her hip and then her lower stomach, before drawing his mouth away.

He lifts her hips and shifts them so that when he releases her she is propped on the scrunched bedding, elevating her so that he can kneel before her but still reach her comfortably with his mouth. He draws her knees up slightly before spreading her wider and then watches the impact this has on her face, liking the way her eyes have widened and her mouth has gone slack with anticipation.

 _Are you okay?_ he asks through the bond.

 _“Fuck yes,”_ she breathes.

Rey wriggles before him, arms still above her head. If she was prone before, she takes it back. Rarely has she felt more vulnerable. Perhaps when he had her long ago in the forest above them, armed with his saber and pointing it at her neck. She’d been afraid, then, and she was afraid now but the difference was that now she was also aroused by both her fear and by him. She feels an ache begin between her thighs and she longs for him to address it. The beg is on the tip of both her mind and tongue, but she quashes it as he continues to bore his magnificent gaze into her eyes, baiting her to do it. Does he want it?

_Please._

Of course he does. Ben lowers his mouth to her and sips the ocean of her cunt like a cup, opening his mouth and wrapping his lips around hers once before drawing himself away, relishing the taste of her on them as he licks them while staring at her eyes, which are still fixed on him, rapture filling them.

_Please._

He bends to her again, this time licking at the folds between her as his hands find the curves of her upper thighs, supporting him as his tongue delves deeper. He hears her begin to moan softly and he draws away again to look at her. He can see the yearning in her eyes but also, beneath it, the part he loves most. Her fury at him is building, She is growing frustrated. He _wants_ that. He _wants_ to watch her anger. He _wants_ to feel it. And he waits as it builds until finally, the look he craves is there in her eyes.

“Fuck, Ben, _please,”_ she begs.

_What do you want me to do?_

“I want you _fucking_ inside me,” she groans.

“Shh,” he breathes, as he lowers his mouth to her again.

He puts his lips to the top of her, and as his tongue finds her clit and circles it he slides two of his fingers inside her to gently fuck her as he licks. He feels her hips lift and push at him before he feels her hands at the back of his head, stroking him. At this, his cock begins to ache as he feels it lengthen. He knows it won’t be long now but he’s not ready yet, and neither is she. As his fingers find the spot just inside her entrance, and press firmly there, holding her, he looks at her again as he begins to suck now at her clit.

The pleasure in Rey is something she can barely contain. Her eyes have not left him, even when it became clear to her that the domination he had tried to maintain over her at the beginning of this had long since dissolved into something more like the reverse. He is hers. At her mercy. And they both know it. And as he looks at her now, his mouth buried between her warm, wet thighs and his fingers buried even deeper, she knows it again. Rey closes her eyes and lets the feeling consume her as her climax builds. She feels the pressure build between his tongue at her clit and his fingers pressed just inside her entrance and then the wave rolls from her hips to her chest and beyond as her whole body undulates from the place where she meets him.

 _“Ben,”_ she can’t help but gasp, knowing she should be quiet but in the moment not caring, submitting to her own wants yet again.

 

3\. Present. Kashyyyk.

 _Wow,_ Finn thinks, blinking. _This thing is impressive._

The inside of the Silencer was more than he’d dreamed of, and as well as all that it was even vaguely familiar. Sure, he’d mopped floors, but they were the floors of _starships._ And not just any starships but _First Order_ starships. TIE fighters were Finn’s bread and butter. He knew every inch of them, although he hadn’t known how to use one until he’d met Poe. But he’d been _good_ at gunning then. He’d learned _fast._ And Poe had known it. That’s why he’d shown him how to do all the rest. That’s why Poe had taught Finn to fly.

Finn hears a hum.

_What the hell?_

Then he realizes that the hum is the _inbuilt_ headset.

 _Of course,_ he thinks, chuckling. _As if Kylo Ren would wear an external headset._

He notices a diode on the console has begun to flash. Taking a chance, Finn punches it.

“Ah, hello, hi?”

“Finn?”

“Poe!”

“Ah, I _gotcha_ buddy! How you doin’?

“I _think_ I got this covered. So, what’s the plan?”

“Okay, Chewie is going to lead and we will fall back either side and hold the formation. I’m going to send you a chart and that’s what you need to set. You got that?”

“Got it.”

“We’re going the scenic route.”

“We’re going the _what?”_

“The _scenic_ route.”

“You mean, like, it’s gonna be a long way, right?”

“Affirmative, pal. Affirmative.”

 

4\. Present. Takodana.

Ben wrenches the bedding from below her hips and flips her over.

“Kneel,” he breathes.

She obeys.

 _Lean forward,_ he thinks through the bond as gently he pushes her shoulder blades down toward the bedding.

Rey extends her arms so that now she is on all fours. Behind her, Ben takes several moments to appreciate this view, even though his throbbing cock is doing its best to hijack all the rational thoughts he currently possesses, one of which is to preserve this moment. The view of her from here is sublime and the grey light from her crystal only serves to amplify the sensuality of her body as it waits for him.

Gently, he places his palms flat against the curves of her hips and pulls her backward, closer to his own. He presses his cock lightly between her buttocks, feels her push back in response before sliding one hand between her thighs and lightly running his finger along her opening from front to back. He watches her back as it undulates with her heavy breath, waiting.

_Do you want me?_

_Of course I fucking do._

She pushes back again, opening herself further for him and pressing herself to the tip of his erection. He almost comes at this. Ben pulls himself back quickly and closes his eyes, breathing deeply. Not ready yet. Wanting to tease her for as long as he can. Wanting again to feel her fury.

_Arch your back._

Again Rey obeys. She feels him press his cock to her cunt. She wriggles, desperate to feel it inside her at last. To feel it fill her. She wriggles again but the angle is wrong. She reaches her hand back to grasp him. Will he let her? Or does he still want her passive?

_Put your hand down._

Breathing out in frustration she obeys him again.

 _Arch your back_ , he repeats through the bond.

Slowly Ben slides his cock into her and they both gasp as they feel the sensation together. He withdraws it, a softer sound escaping him this time as he feels himself slide along her. He tilts his head back and breathes again, letting the pleasure seep through every inch of him, and every inch of his cock longs to be inside her again so he repeats what he’s just done, and they feel it all again.

 _“Please,”_ she moans.

Ben breaks then, sliding into her once more and beginning a steady rhythm as he watches his cock drive into the folds between the curves of her arse. Rey braces herself as she feels his hips pound at her flesh at an ever-increasing speed. The more she arches, the more the pleasure he creates inside her grows and she dips her shoulders further so that now she is on her elbows. He doesn’t seem to mind this and she feels him pull her back further to him, as his pace increases again.

_I’m going to come inside you._

_Please._

She hears him breathe out coarsely and then after several more moments he pulls her to him tight and doesn’t pull back, instead rocks into her as he holds her close, breathing heavily and murmuring under his breath. She catches her name but the rest is indecipherable. Through the bond she catches feelings and images. Ben afloat in the water, the sun on his face, the feel of her kiss on his jaw and the sight of her bare arse on the slate. Then it dissolves and she feels him withdraw and he lies back on the bedding, still breathing hard.

Rey drops, nuzzling her face and cheek against the bedding and listening to the sounds of her own breath. She wriggles, still feeling the effects on her muscles of her orgasm but also the more recent effects of him inside her. She smiles and then wriggles around so she can see him. He has turned his face to look at her, too.

 _I love you,_ she thinks through the bond.

 _Marry me,_ he thinks back.

She raises an eyebrow and then buries her face again in the bedding, smiling and wriggling again before bringing her hands up under her chest and chin and gently making fists with them. Did he say that? Or did she imagine it? She turns her head to rest on her other cheek and face the small violet crystal, still resting beside her on the bedding. Its glow is soft, steady and comforting.

 _Marry me, please,_ she hears him think again.

Rey reaches out a hand and takes the crystal in her fist before turning her head back to face him. They both continue to lie on opposite sides of the bedding, within each other’s sights and in states of sheer peace as the passion in them lulls like the soft thrum of a chord. Rey grins at him.

“I’ll _think_ about it,” she whispers.

 

5\. Present. Takodana.

“Prepare to land.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She steadies her feet, shoulder-width apart, as the Upsilon-class command shuttle makes its descent to the surface.

“Prepare to disembark.”

She can see through the holos the effect her words have on the formations of stormtroopers. She has always enjoyed this part of leading. The feeling of domination that mere words have over subordinate soldiers under her thumb. She has always been good at it: dominating. Even as a child she possessed it: authority. And she has always known she was born to lead something. When the traitor Ren had defected, Hux had naturally risen and now the might of the First Order belonged to General Phasma.

The fact that the demise of a faction of it had once almost taken her with it merely made it sweeter. Her own ascension. As she’d felt the searing heat of the fire burn out her eye she’d thought she _had_ at last died for the cause. But she’d been lucky, and Supreme Leader Hux had been benevolent in his readiness to fashion her a new helmet. One she knew she would never live without. But the First Order’s belief in her was worth much more than a simple eye, or her own trachea.

As the fleet of shuttles land on the nocturnal surface of Takodana, and she hears the pronounced rasp in her modulated voice through the new helmet on which she now relies to live, Phasma knows the sound of it makes her even more menacing.

_A new Vader._

“To your posts. Now.”

 

6\. Present. Takodana.

Rey is on her feet so fast that she almost faints, blood rushing back to her head in a storm of panic. Ben, too, moves as fast as his huge frame will let him in a scramble to fasten his pants and call his saber.

“I’ll wake Maz.”

“Fuck,” Rey huffs, as she scrabbles for her clothes but then she slows. “Ben, _wait.”_

He pauses. Rey thinks.

The First Order was already here. They’d known this. They’d been feeling the movement of stormtroopers since the late afternoon. This was not new. The only new things they’d sensed were that Hux was in the system and now Phasma had also arrived. But that was not entirely unexpected. The ground troops needed their own leader. This was not an ambush. This was something else.

“Ben, we have to stay _calm_ ,” Rey says, as she continues to finish dressing, but not at the furious pace that Ben had set as he’d prepared himself for a fight he was predicting would happen sooner rather than later.

“What do you _mean?”_ he says, panic rising. He felt she was stalling.

“ _Think_ about it,” Rey says, as she stops and stares at him, still sensing. “Ben… _They have landed their military General.”_

“Yeah, so we’ve gotta fucking move…”

“No. They’re not about to blow _anything_ up. _It’s a trap.”_

 

7\. Present. Tashtor Sector.

“Excellent.”

Hux cuts the feed and the holo beaming from the command shuttle fades. He has always believed he was destined to rule the galaxy, and now here he was. In a stroke of luck, Ren and the girl had disposed of Snoke, who he’d never trusted. Who he’d always secretly despised. When Ren had disappeared with her, Hux had convinced the High Command that it was a defection and that Ren was a traitor. Hux knew he’d been the First Order’s only option left to lead.

And as he looks down upon the ribboned green and blue of the planet’s lush surface he recalls another reason why they’d chosen him. The ancient religion was almost gone. Although Ren had initially botched it, the last Jedi _had_ died after Crait. Hux knew the rumors were true. The Knights had confirmed it. He smirked as he thought of Ren, who probably thought he still led them.

 _Idiot,_ he thinks.

Newly angered by the memory, Hux re-activates the holo and the image flickers and then steadies to reveal the last of the stormtroopers disembarking from the fleet of shuttles. Hux knows Ren will sense them.

“Let the games begin.”

 

8\. Present. Kashyyyk / Kashyyyk System.

Poe settles in.

“BB-8, send it.”

The droid burbles confirmation as it transfers the charts to both the Falcon and the Silencer.

“Chewie, Finn, confirm.”

“I got it.”

Chewie brays.

“Okay, lift it.”

The three ships begin their ascent. Through the visor of the dated helmet he watches the console track the ship’s proximity from the surface until the jungle canopy begins to arc and he can see the curve of Kashyyyk’s distant horizon.

“Moving out.”

The thrusters propel the X-wing forward on a course that will eventually take them out of the atmosphere. Poe watches through his right viewport as the Silencer well overshoots the programmed altitude before correcting and then following a similar but slightly wavering trajectory as he and Chewie in the Falcon just had.

“Finn, you okay?”

“Man, this thing is _sensitive.”_

Poe smirks.

“No surprises there,” he mutters, thinking back to Kylo Ren on Crait.

As their small fleet begins to follow the course BB-8 has configured through the atmosphere, and out into the star system, Poe can’t help but think again of Rey. Is she okay? She’d sounded okay, only mildly panicked. She’d said they were short on time. Where were they now? Was Kylo even still with her? _Would_ he do that to her? Leave her? Poe knew what he’d felt when they’d all still been on Kashyyyk, and not just from Kylo, but from Rey as well. As the X-wing begins its bank right, out of what’s become habit Poe reaches for the chain around his neck, through which is threaded his mother’s ring.

_Rey, we’re on our way._

 

9\. Present. Takodana.

“They’re leaving,” Rey says, quietly.

Ben exhales roughly, still anxious but calming.

“Okay, what now?”

She takes a deep breath.

“I need to know their route. And I need _them_ to know what the situation is here. Ben, we might need to turn them around. Stall.”

Ben senses.

“Hux?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “But just until the Resistance land. How long do you think before sunrise?”

Ben pauses, sensing again. Rey knows he is much quicker at this than her, having had years of both training and practice and she certainly isn’t fool enough to waste that.

“We’re only halfway through the night.”

“In that case, don’t wake Maz yet.”

“Okay,” he sighs, knowing arguing with her is pointless, but at the same time sensing the logic of it.

The sigh, Ben thinks, is more of an attempt to continue to calm his own internal panic than it is to judge her decision. He hopes she can read this but just in case he flicks the thought out there and feels it land. He notes the slight softening in her eyes and gives her a small smile.

Rey sits herself down on the earthen floor and leans back as she watches Ben return to the bed near the firepit, giving her space. Rey still holds in her hand the violet-colored crystal. Perhaps as they wait she can begin to finally assemble what she’s put off for so long. To have another saber would be not merely useful but crucial. The Resistance will only have blasters, and of course so too will most of their opposition. Saber’s blocked, as did the Force, but blasters were a one-way street, which she knew wasn’t good enough. They needed reflexive weaponry.

Rey sighs. This war planning stuff was complex.

As she turns the crystal over, she thinks of Poe. Closing her eyes, Rey reaches out to him through the Force. She smiles as his image begins to overlay the sight of her hands and she notices what’s shielding his eyes – a visor identical to the one on the helmet she’d scavenged years ago on Jakku.

_You know I sometimes used to wear one of those and pretend I was on that fighter._

_Rey?_  Poe thinks back, through the bond she has opened between them. _Are you okay?_

_We’re fine._

_What did you just say? I mean… think?_

Rey smiles.

_That helmet. That’s vintage Battle of Jakku._

Poe chuckles.

_Bet yours didn’t smell half as bad as this, Luke should have washed more often._

Rey laughs and she sees Poe smile again.

 _So_ , she hears him think as her senses finally catch up with her vision and she realizes that the Resistance is somewhere in the eastern Mid Rim. _You’re really okay?_

_Yes._

_Kylo’s still there?_

_Yes. Poe?_

_Yeah?_

_Hux has arrived with a fleet in the system._

_“What?!_ Oh, man…”

Through the bond Rey hears Chewie bray and then Finn’s anxious voice. Poe must still have open transmission.

 _Well that news has clearly gone down well,_ she thinks wryly.

_“Say that again, I think I hallucinated.”_

_Hux has arrived with a fleet in the system. But don’t worry, we have a plan._

“Now, where have I heard that before?”

“Poe, are you tripping out? Who you talking to?”

Rey grins as she hears Finn’s voice, aware how strange this must sound to him through a headset.

“It’s fine,” she hears Poe say. “It’s Rey.”

As time has passed, her vision of Poe and his surroundings has strengthened and now Rey can see the interior of the starship surrounding him, as well as his face and upper body.

“I’m just gonna dip out for a minute, clear this up. I’ll come back to you, buddy, fill you in. Chewie, you good?”

Rey hears him bray and then watches Poe shut off the X-wing’s external communication stream.

“Okay,” Poe says. “Ah, do I say this or think it? I’m confused.”

 _Whatever you like,_ Rey thinks. _I can hear you either way._

“Okay, I think I’ll just talk it out.”

_That’s fine. Don’t panic, okay? It’s going to be fine._

“Wow, that Takodana weather must have given you a healthy dose of optimism because the last time I was around Hux things definitely did _not_ turn out fine.”

Rey sighs.

_Poe, I know. Please just listen. Ben and I are going to send the First Order fleet out. After that happens, you will need to enter the system and then land. There are ground troops all over the planet and so we will meet you and…_

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”  he interrupts, and Rey can feel the panic rising in his voice as well as feel it in him through the bond she has opened. _“Fuck,_ Rey, _slow down._ _What?!_ Start over!”

She sighs again. She knows it’s complex. He needs it step by step.

 _Okay, steps,_ she thinks. _First step, don’t enter the system until you hear from me that it’s time. Is that clear?_

“Yeah,” he replies, cautiously. “What do you mean there are ground troops all over? Rey, I’m nervous…”

_Don’t worry, we can deal with it. But you need to get here first. Okay?_

“How many ground troops?”

_I’m not telling you._

“Then we’re turning around.”

_Poe!_

_“How many ground troops?”_

Rey glares at him before she realizes that he can’t see her. Still, she is pissed. Then she remembers he’s just as stubborn as her and sighs in resignation.

 _Fine,_ she thinks. _Hundreds._ _Plus Phasma._

“Wow, this just gets better and better, don’t it? And what do you mean, _Phasma?_ Finn said she burnt to a crisp!”

_Apparently not._

Rey sees Poe reach for the console and re-open the communication stream.

“Finn.”

“I’m here.”

“Phasma’s back.”

“ _What?!_ Impossible. No one could have survived that.”

“Rey, tell him.”

She pauses, frowning slightly. She wonders how to do this. _Expand_ a _Force-connection?_ Remembering the process she always followed in order to expand her Force-shields, Rey tries to imagine the extremities of her vision of Poe. She knows they are flying in close formation, and not yet at lightspeed, which means that the starships are maintaining a close enough proximity that this just might work. And she tries it, expanding the perimeter of her vision on Poe to the whole of the X-wing, and then beyond it to the section of system they’re in until she feels the edges of the Silencer. She has to close her eyes to focus it but at last she can also see Finn as she feels her heart race.

“Rey?” she hears Poe ask anxiously. “You still there?”

 _Yes,_ she replies. _I just had to figure out how to… Finn?_

 _“Rey?”_ Finn says, and as she sees him literally bounce in the seat of the Silencer she can’t help but smile. She has missed him. “Are you okay?”

 _Yes,_ she thinks, blinking back tears.

Suddenly, hearing Finn say her name with such care – her first real friend – the emotion she’s been somehow managing to keep at bay hits her. Rey has to fight to maintain her connection with them both through the Force as she can’t help but let the tears fall.

This was it. After so much time, the plan they’d formed – that Ben had first suggested to her on Ilum what felt like _eons_ ago now – was finally beginning to unfold.

Could they pull it off? And what if they couldn’t? Ben’s words echo through her head again now as her sight of Poe and Finn continues and she watches them, boggled by their faith in her. Their trust in her. Their belief.

_The Resistance, the Light. It will be gone, Rey._

This _had_ to work. It just _had_ to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I just couldn’t help but return Phasma, it seemed right... And it was essential to spend a great deal of time ‘researching’ Adam Driver’s naked upper body in order to write the start of #2. Yes, actually, it was.


	13. Ilum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the middle of the night on Takodana, Rey finally builds her saberstaff as she and Ben face some hard realities.

1\. Past. Ilum.

Rey reached out to stroke it, the color enchanting her most, and when the pads of her fingers made contact with its surface she felt it again. A physical reverberation through the Force, deep like a low bass chord that played so far below a harmony it could barely be sensed. But Rey knew it had always been there, backing and underwriting the song.

_That is what I am._

Her own words echoed in her head as she opened her palm and began to gently Force-push between the intricate fissures, just as he’d shown her to do.

“That’s it, gently,” Ben reminded her. “Or it’ll shatter…”

They watched a hairline crack emerge and slowly creak its way along the lower half of the small glassy structure. Shifting her hand slightly, she began to work on the top half in just the same careful fashion until the small rock fell loose. Rey caught the cold stone in the palm of her warm hand, closing her fingers swiftly around it before turning to look up at him, and smiling with pride at the single violet kyber she’d earned.

 

2\. Present. Takodana.

How many times has she done _this_ now?

Still buoyed by her sight of Finn in the Silencer, and the sound of his voice, Rey lays it all out again, not even minding that she _still_ hasn’t finished this job, even after so many attempts to start it. It’s still all there, just the one thing to go.

“The fucking _plasma_ ,” she mutters under her breath, thinking back to Kashyyyk.

She’d been so close that time. She’d sensed Chewie was the one to approach for it. Bowcasters required it to charge the quarrels and if he’d run out she knew he’d know where to go to get more, but she and Ben had needed to leave and now she was still without it.

“Ancient weapons,” he sighs.

Rey whips her head around.

“Kid. This _really_ worth all the trouble?”

She smiles.

“I _gave_ you a blaster, what’d you do with it?”

Characteristically contrapposto, Han glances nervously in the direction of Ben – by all accounts asleep once more on the bed by the firepit – and then moves gingerly toward where Rey is crouched in front of the jumble of electronics and near the mouth of the small den, where she’d first made their bedding before falling asleep and hearing what Ben had later labelled as a call to her by the Darkness.

“Don’t tell me too much about _that_ by the way,” Han adds, hitching his thumb in the direction of Ben as he crouches beside her.

She gives one small nod to acknowledge his request but as Rey looks at Han she can see that his eyes are just as soft at the edges as they’d been when he’d offered her a job. She gives him a very faint smile, and Han returns it.

“So,” he says gently. “Plasma, huh?”

“Yeah,” Rey says, softly. “I already asked Chewie about it.”

“And?”

She purses her lips.

“He agreed to help, but then…”

Han gives her a tight smile.

“I know,” he mutters, shifting his weight on his haunches and sighing as he glances at Ben. “I tried to always prioritize him, too, although maybe I wasn’t _always_ the best at showing it.”

Han reaches out a hand to the lightsaber parts and frowns.

“Hokey religions,” he starts. “I dunno too much about ‘em but apart from the plasma, ain’t you missing something?”

“Oh, it’s here,” Rey says quickly as she places the small violet crystal with the rest.

Han raises an eyebrow.

“Purple?”

 _“Violet,”_ she corrects.

Han rolls his eyes and opens his mouth to snark but Rey has his number.

 _“No,”_ she asserts, pointing at him. “It’s violet, _sweetheart,_ and before you add something about princesses, too, this colour has nothing to do with royalty.”

Han shuts his mouth quickly. He’d almost forgotten. Rey has balls.

“Violet is the last colour before the darkness,” she explains, as she turns her gaze back to the parts in front of her and remembers what Maz had said.

“The _darkness_?”

“Yes,” Rey says softly, looking at Han again. “But it isn’t Dark. It’s _Grey_.”

“Good _and_ evil,” he breathes.

“There is no such thing as either,” she murmurs in response, and to her surprise he nods.

Ben snores loudly and they both turn. The den is so quiet that the sound has echoed, shattering the intimacy of their conversation and suddenly Rey remembers the context in which this discussion with the ghost of Han Solo is occurring. She frowns.

“How are you even _here?”_ she asks, looking at him again.

Han gives her a wry smile.

“I’m wondering that myself,” he says, sighing. “But if you’ll _let_ me…”

Pausing, he looks at Rey and when she doesn’t interject he places his palms on his lower thighs and slowly lifts himself up into a standing position. He crosses the floor of the large den and, just before disappearing into the mouth of a smaller one, pauses.

“Well,” he sighs. “Come on.”

Rey follows him to the rear of it, hovering just behind as Han places his palms on one of the larger wooden crates at the back of the dimly lit space.

“You got something to jemmy this off with?” he asks, referring to the lid, which is nailed tight to its base.

“Oh, yeah,” she says, and swiftly moves back to the main space, rummaging briefly through her haversack before extracting Leia’s blaster.

When she returns, she hands it to him cautiously. He grimaces, recognizing it.

“How long you had this?”

Rey looks down at it guiltily.

“After it happened,” she starts, in a small voice, “I took it, when the First Order chased me back to Jakku.”

“Him too?” he asks, hitching his thumb in the direction of Ben again.

“Yes,” she says, quietly. “He still led them back then.”

Han begins to work one of the metallic lips at the butt of the blaster underneath the wood as Rey watches, thinking, but keeping the thoughts to herself for now.

“I take it you know where you are.”

“Smuggler den,” Rey says. “Well, according to Ben. I just thought it was a hole in the ground.”

“Hmph,” Han mumbles, impressed. “Yeah, well, he was in enough of ‘em I s’pose. I gave Maz a few things off the Falcon over the years. Me and Chewie trusted her to mind ‘em.”

The lid of the crate raises and then at last one corner rises up clear of the lower base and Han inserts his thumbs below to lift it up.

“Luckily,” he finishes, as he hands the blaster back to Rey, “She knows her stuff. They won’t find you here unless you tell ‘em.”

“Why not?” Rey asks, as she tucks the blaster into the rear of her belt.

Han places the lid of the crate carefully on the floor so that it rests vertically against one side.

“It’s cloaked.”

“The First Order can run de-cloaking scans,” she says quickly, alarm in her voice now as she remembers what Ben had told her on Kashyyyk, when she’d tried to convince him to modify the transport with the cloaking device from the Falcon.

“Not underground,” Han replies, reaching into the crate with both hands and carefully lifting a smaller crate from within it.

“I used to think it was pointless,” he begins, as he rests the smaller box gently on top of a nearby chest before replacing the lid back on the crate, “To cache ammunition, but Chewie always insisted on it.”

“But when you _need_ it, you _need_ it,” she says, frowning as though it were obvious.

“Yeah,” he says nodding, and giving her a very familiar lop-sided smile of approval. “Why _leave_ it somewhere?”

Rey grins. When she’d first met Han she’d always felt, somehow, less alone around him.  Less odd. Less stubborn. Less lonely. And she hadn’t known why at the time, but maybe she did now as she watches Ben seemingly continue to sleep by the firepit, snoring softly.

Han reaches inside the crate and lifts out a small tank.

“Here,” he says, handing it to Rey.

She blinks, still lost in her thoughts, and then comes to her senses.

“ _This_ is _plasma?”_ she asks, frowning down at it.

 _“Inside,”_ Han says, somewhat bewildered by her uncharacteristic daftness. “Come on, I’ll help you.”

They walk back to the array of bits on the floor.

“Han?”

“Mm?”

Rey doesn’t know how to say it. _Any_ of it. There are so many questions she has that she wants to ask of him. So many answers she still seeks.

Where is Leia now? And where is Luke? Why haven’t either of them contacted her? And why is _he_ here instead? _Is_ it okay about Ben? Or is it wrong? Does Han know what Ben asked her? And what does he think about _that?_ What should she say in response? Yes? _No?_ Or ignore him completely? And is she completely mad to have called the Resistance to Takodana now? Are they all doomed? _Will_ a path to survival – _victory,_ even – emerge?  Or does she need to _make_ one? And, if so, _how?_

“Nothing,” Rey mutters, crouching down before the parts again and motioning to them. “So, what do we do now with all _this_ shit?”

“Galaxy knows, but the caps come off like this,” he replies, as he pushes the tip of his thumbnail against the side of one of the plasma cylinders and a thin disc lifts from its top. Inside, Rey can see a mercurial substance. Han presses his nail again to the same spot and the disc slides back into place.

“Don’t worry,” Han reassures her, as he notices her expression has fallen. “He’ll help you. He knows how to do it.”

Rey looks up. Should she ask him now?

“Han?”

He purses his lips in response and Rey remembers what he’d said earlier about not wanting to know.

“Nothing,” she says again, dropping her gaze to the floor.

“Listen,” he grumbles, reaching out to touch her hand, which has returned to the violet crystal. _“It’s okay.”_

Rey looks up. Han sighs.

“You’re _good_ for him. You know that. Ain’t no use me tryin’ to change your mind about it. _I_ know _that.”_

She gives him a small smile, one she can see is trying to make its way onto Han’s face, too.

“I’m just glad,” he says, grimacing, as he places his hands on his knees again and stands gingerly, “That someone finally found it again in the kid.”

“Found what?” Rey asks, as she watches him begin to fade.

_The heart._

Rey stares now at nothing but the firepit and in its foreground Ben, whose eyes are open. It takes a moment for it to register and then, blinking, her brain catches up. She stands.

“Stay there,” Ben breathes, before she can say anything. “We might as well finish it. You’ve waited long enough.”

Is he pissed? His voice is not cold but it’s definitely stilted. How long has he been awake for? What has he heard them say? Perhaps he’d been able to sense them in sleep, after all Han had already visited Ben in dreams. That’s why they’d come here.

_For galaxy’s sake, take her to Maz._

Rey watches cautiously as Ben stands and makes his way over to the place from where Han has just disappeared.

And she’d already known this, but somehow it was only just dawning on her how similar Ben was to him. Right now, it was Ben’s manner that was striking her most. The swagger, which she’d certainly noticed, but now that he was in a mood it was either more pronounced, or she was reading it differently. It was defensive, as well as offensive. The slant of his hips when Ben stopped in front of her was both a warning and a summons.

Rey sighs and stands, for some reason annoyed. By Ben? Or by something else? She can feel something changing. Somewhere. Not yet sure where. But there is something she’s beginning to sense that is new. That wasn’t there before.

“What?” he asks, eyes narrowing as he senses it too. Something is different. _Where?_ Is it something in her? _What?_

Rey tries to read Ben once more. Is it something different in not her but _him?_ He is definitely pissed…

She remembers how he’d been before they came here: sad. And now she is feeling that same sadness. She remembers what she’d inferred from what he’d confided to her about the dream he’d had when they’d first arrived on Kashyyyk, as well as his feelings about it – that he was mourning. She’d almost forgotten and now she feels guilty, as though she’s neglected him. Of _course_ he is feeling left out, hell, she would be too if the tables were turned and somehow the ghost of one of _her_ parents had shown up and spoken only to Ben. She’d be envious.

“You’re pissed at me,” she says plainly.

He purses his lips, still trying to define the new thing in her he can sense. “You wanna do this or not?”

“Yeah, I do,” she says. “But…”

“I don’t wanna talk about it now.”

“Okay.”

They sit down together in front of the parts and the next few minutes pass in silence as they work steadily to prep the pieces, stripping back plastic-coated casings and splitting the ends of circuitry. Unthreading wires and re-twisting cabling in some places. Ben _does_ know what he’s doing, Han had been right. He _had_ done this before, after all, just not finished the job off. Rey wonders if now perhaps he will. She wants to ask, but she still doesn’t sense he wants to talk.

At last they reach a point from where they can do nothing further with their bare hands, and Ben stops.

“We need tools,” he says, quietly, breaking the silence.

“I’ll go,” Rey says, sensing what they need‘s in the crate Han had earlier opened.

She stands and Ben waits on the earthen floor, cross-legged and head cocked slightly to the side, staring in the direction of the wiring he’s just completed, but not really looking at it.

_I tried to always prioritize him…_

He _tried?_ Ben shifts on the earth. He reclines, leaning back and gazing up at the boarded ceiling of the den. _Tried…_

Ben’s never really forgotten the droids. When he thinks back, to his earliest memories, droids come to mind before his parents. Circuits and wires. The light of diodes. These emerge from the pit of his memories before the warmth of the skin of his parents on his own. _Tried…_

Ben had sworn – and still did – that he would _never_ , as an adult, let a…

“Ben?”

He starts. She is back. He blinks at her, still half in a daze.

“Are you okay?” she asks, quietly.

He pauses. He _could_ tell her. Talk to her. He knows she will listen, because she always does.

She will listen to what he feels about what he remembers from childhood because she knows he’s just seen the ghost of his father, and senses it reminds him of his earliest memories. Memories which had not involved either of his parents. Ben could ask her if that was strange. And perhaps she will think it isn’t strange because _her_ earliest memories – similarly – do not involve her parents, but someone else who’d been a substitute, however poor.

And Rey will listen to what he feels about the other thing, which he can’t quite articulate yet….

And he knows she’ll understand about _both_ of these things, but he doesn’t have the courage now to say either of them aloud.

Rey frowns. Slowly, she walks to Ben and then kneels. She is holding a toolbox. He can tell it contains what they need. He recognizes it, actually. It had once belonged to his father.

At the fresh thought of his father, Ben blinks. And he knows that she can tell why. That he isn’t just trying to clear his head but his eyes, too. Ben is blinking back tears. Rey grounds the box and wraps her arms around him. He leans in to her body, smelling her and feeling the warmth not just from her arms and chest but from her heart too.

“Ben,” she breathes. “It’s okay.”

Rey is reminded of what seems like a long time ago but which is, in fact, only weeks. Of the way his body had felt beneath her embrace as she’d held him in the annex, and he had silently wept. He’d asked her to leave, then. Did he want this now, too?

_I don’t want you to leave._

“Should I have woken you?” she whispers, still holding Ben and reminded of how he’d felt around her when they’d still been outside, in the late day and prior to this night. It seemed that their actions were more and more mirrored. That reversals and inversions between them – and their behaviors – were becoming more frequent, and constants were beginning to become more abstract. Less tangible. Less fixed.

“I was awake,” Ben mutters back. “I knew he was there.”

Gently, Rey pulls her face away and cautiously looks down at him, still very close. He doesn’t look up at her. Instead he presses his face against her chest and his arms fall loosely around her hips. One of them snakes to her belly and it finally hits him. Now he knows what he’d sensed just before the conversation had turned to his father, and Ben had wept openly for his memories.

“You feel that, too, don’t you?” he breathes, looking up at her in amazement.

“Yes,” she replies before placing a kiss on the crown of his head and then promptly changing the subject. “Why don’t you want to talk to him?”

Pressing his forehead to the soft curve of her chest, Ben closes his eyes.

_Holy fucking shit._

“Ben?” she repeats. _“Why?”_

 _“What?”_ he breathes, head still spinning.

“Why don’t you want to talk to him? He was your _father_ …”

The light of the diode returns, and so do the words.

_I tried to always prioritize him._

_Never,_ as an adult…

“Never _what?”_ Rey asks, dropping her head to be closer to Ben’s and reaching for his face with her hands.

Ben pulls himself away from her and sits back, mouth slack and eyes wide.

Rey sighs and sits down opposite him, crossing her legs and reaching for the toolbox. She begins to work her thumbs beneath the lid as she starts to speak softly, thinking carefully and measuring the tone of every word. Knowing exactly what she wants but feeling the shock unfurl in Ben and needing to acknowledge it as much as she needs him to understand. Wanting him to understand.

“It’s _this_ that I want to create right now, Ben,” she says, as she lifts several tools from the box and then motions to the electronics they’d earlier made together.

Slowly, Ben reaches for her quarterstaff as Rey begins to charge the soldering laser with the ion pack she’s also removed from the toolbox.

“How long do you think this will take?” she asks him, softly.

Ben pauses, still struggling.

“Not long,” he guesses vaguely, and just as softly.

He pauses again as he watches her manually pump the pack, kinetically beginning the charge before laying both the pack and the laser on the floor and reclining again. Then they stare at each other across the tools for several minutes. The den is quiet, and low lit. The crystals still light it softly.

“So, you don’t want… to?” he asks, quietly.

“Not yet,” she says, softly. “Not _yet.”_

“I’m sorry,” he breathes.

“Why?” she asks, pausing and looking up. “You didn’t do this.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No,” she says gently, returning to the parts and running her hands over the careful work they’ve done on them. “We did this together, Ben. Like everything else.”

She gives him a soft smile, but Ben doesn’t return it. Rey feels his conflict, but she knows it firsthand, too. If she leaves it too long, will she doubt her decision? If she doesn’t leave it long enough, will Ben resent her?

Rey turns her attention back to the infant saber. She glances at the ion pack. Its diode glows green. She takes hold of her quarterstaff and places it across her lap, running her fingers over the scrap metal in the places she intends to cut. She makes several assessments, before nodding slightly to herself and then placing the staff adjacent to her on the floor in front of her crossed legs.

Sensing what she needs, Ben passes the circuitry to her.

“Thanks,” she offers, glancing up at him as she takes it in her own hands and lays it next to the staff in the place she knows it should go: the center.

Ben gives her a soft smile. Rey blinks. He watches her face soften. She is happier now. He knows she needs him to be, too. To not be angry with her. To not resent her. To help her. To help her finish this thing she’s been wanting to finish for so long: the saberstaff. Since he’d taken her to Ilum and explained about the importance of kyber to the Jedi – the quests for crystals – the importance to her of building her own Jedi weapon had been plain.

Ben stands, and Rey watches him as he walks to her and sits down behind her. He spreads his knees either side of her, still cross-legged on the floor, and pulls himself to her so that his hips and chest are pressed close to her back. He wraps his arms around her belly and places his cheek to the side of hers.

“I love you so very much,” he breathes.

Rey blinks back tears. She can’t speak the words so she thinks them.

_I love you too, Ben._

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Sort of,” she whispers. “Do you?”

“Yes,” he says, quietly. “But I don’t want to upset you.”

Rey blinks again but her eyes are growing foggier. She reaches out to the laser torch and the emergent saber, wanting to begin work on the cuts through the metal but knowing that anything she does now will be executed poorly because her vision is clouded by the tears in her eyes.

“Do you think Han could sense it, and that’s why he appeared?” she murmurs, her voice shaky.

Ben holds her closer.

“Maybe,” he whispers.

Sensing her distress, and the state in which it’s leaving her, Ben reaches around her body for the laser torch and ion pack, buttressing the pack into the hilt of the torch to connect the parts and enable the tool. He places it on the ground in front of her. When she is ready, he knows she will take it.

“When I saw him, I thought something I hadn’t thought in years,” he says softly, as his hands return to her belly.

Ben feels her lean in to him. Rey relaxes her upper body and leans her cheek against his.

“What?” she asks softly, as she closes her eyes. “What was it?”

“A memory,” Ben starts. “That I had of them. Well, that I _didn’t_ have of them, actually. That I had because they _weren’t_ there. They were too busy. They left me alone. With a droid. I was small. Really small. I got scared. I remember it. I remember the light from the droid. And I remember thinking back on it. Many times, thinking back on it. And deciding I wouldn’t do that. _Ever._ To some kid. Leave it. Because I was too busy.”

A silence descends between them. They sit together on the floor, Ben still pressed close to her back and with the half-built saberstaff still before them. Ben reaches for the hilt of the torch.

“You heard him say that thing about prioritizing, right?”

“Heard Han say?” she replies, as she watches him activate the laser by pressing the tip of his thumb to the safety as he rolls it swiftly down to the latch, showing her how.

“Yeah,” Ben says, releasing the latch.

Rey watches the laser extinguish itself. He hands the torch to her.

“Try it,” he says. 

She picks up the torch and repeats what he showed her.

“Here,” she says, running the forefinger of her opposite hand along one side of the quarterstaff, “And here. Yes?”

“Looks fine to me,” he says, gently. “Do it when you’re ready.”

Rey uses the tool with confidence and the laser cuts the metal clean in response. Three hollow pieces lie now before her. She picks up the smallest and makes two vertical cuts along it so that now there is a curved casing and a thin metal cover.

“For the activator,” she says, turning her head back and meeting his gaze.

Ben smiles and nods.

“Nice,” he says.

Rey leans back again against his chest and tucks her hands beneath his forearms.

“Yeah, I heard it,” Rey says, softly.

“Do you think he meant it?” Ben breathes.

Rey turns her body in his arms so that she faces Ben now.

“Yes,” she says. “Ben, he loved you. He _still_ loves you.”

“It would be like that, wouldn’t it?” he asks.

“You mean,” Rey says slowly, still curled around so she can see him. “You mean that we could only _try…”_

“To prioritize,” Ben finishes, nuzzling her face again with his own. “Because there is so much now. To do. In a war.”

“Yes,” Rey says softly, pressing her forehead to Ben’s. “I just don’t know how I could do everything I already want to do, and then…”

“And then that as well.”

“Yes,” she breathes. “But I love you so much. Because right now, Ben, _you’re_ my priority.”

Rey places both her hands to his face and kisses him deeply. She feels him respond as she leans in to him. He shifts his hands around her body and to her lower back as he pulls her toward him. Lying back, he feels her press her belly against him as he lifts one knee so his thigh rubs between hers as she lays herself along him, her body undulating with her jaw as she continues to kiss him slowly.

Gently, Rey pulls her mouth away and lifts herself up to kneel over him, gazing down.

“You’re not sure now, are you?” he says, as he looks up at her face, shadowed by an expression he doesn’t recognize in her – she really doesn’t do it much – but which he senses is hesitation.

She shakes her head, as though trying to clear her indecision or shake back some confidence, Ben can’t decide which. It troubles him to see her like this.

“The more you think about it, the harder it’s going to be.”

“I just want someone to tell me what to do,” she murmurs.

“Why?” he asks gently.

“So I can’t feel guilty for making the wrong choice.”

“You _can’t_ make the wrong choice, Rey. There’s no such thing.”

“What do _you_ want to do?” she asks him.

“I just want to love you,” he breathes. “Whatever that looks like. Whether it be this. Whether it be married to you, settling down. Whether it be leading a revolution. Or whether it be some kind of random combination of all of those things, Rey, I love you and I just want you to let me. And that’s all I want. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Rey feels fresh tears prickle the corners of her eyes as she blinks them and can’t help but smile, overwhelmed by a full gamut of emotion as the honesty in him that has prompted these words of his makes its full impact on her. She kisses him slowly and tenderly, thinking back again to the kiss they’d shared in the lake, and on the slate. Thinking back to how he’d made love to her there, and how it had been so different to just fucking. Was that when this had happened?

When they fucked it was carnal. When they fucked it was a natural conclusion to their fights, the ones they had with each other and the ones when they were allied. The fucking and the fighting were symmetrical. And even though Rey loved doing both of those things with Ben, when Ben _made love_ to her she felt like the whole galaxy stopped as it happened, because it no longer mattered. That kind of sex wasn’t physical at all. It was nebulous and inchoate. And those things were timeless. They would never run out, like their bodies would. Those times weren’t bound by physical laws or limits. Those times didn’t just sate a thirst in her physical shell but something much bigger and less easy to define that she could only feel because of the Force. Their bond.

Rey wants to feel that again now. As she continues to knead his mouth softly with her own – tasting him against her and feeling the warmth of him merging with the warmth of her own flesh – she makes sure he knows it. She feels his thigh press more firmly against her sex as she begins to grind a steadier, more confident rhythm against him, hips rocking. He begins to work his fingers gently below her hair to cradle the back of her neck, gently coaxing her down and closer toward him.

But something makes her pause then, and it’s not indecision. She’s decided her next steps. What stops her is – once again – her realization that she has overlooked Ben. She slows their kiss then pulls her mouth back from his and slides her body gently from him so that now she lies on her side, facing him on the bedding. One of her thighs still rests lazily across his abdomen as he gently strokes its outer edge with his fingertips, mouth slack and eyes still hooded.

“I know he’ll come back,” Rey breathes, looking steadily into his eyes.

She watches Ben blink, his head still lost in his lust for her but slowly returning to their earlier conversation.

“My father?”

“Yes,” she murmurs, as she reaches out to touch his lower lip and gently brush her thumb along it.

At this, Ben closes his eyes. He takes a deep, calming breath and she can sense his focus on her touch at his lip. But she can also sense that he’s had enough of this subject for now and she doesn’t want to push him. She knows that in time he’ll talk more about it. The subject of Han’s death will probably never leave them. Will never be really resolved. But in order to process it properly, there is something else they need to resolve now.

“Ben, I want to do it now, and then I want to finish my saber.”

“Okay,” he says, softly. “You know how?”

“I think so, yes.”

Keeping her thumb at his lip, she places the other at her belly and thinks of the violet crystal. The tiny cracks she’d made in its fissures – a week or so ago on Ilum with Ben – as gently she’d moved energy through the Force to extract it carefully. Just as gently, she reaches inside herself now to feel the tiny thing that she and Ben have made there. And carefully she releases it until she feels it let go of its very small purchase on her body, no longer bound but free.

And then Rey and Ben hold on to each other as together they feel its energy settle safely back into the Force.

 

3\. Present. Kashyyyk System / Wild Space

Sometimes, nebulae emerge on their own. Poe doesn’t remember why. He can’t quite recall that bit from what they’d taught him as part of his training at the New Republic Navy.

What he does remember though is that interstellar media contain gasses that nebulae for some reason need, but random luck seems to have more of an impact. Or at least that’s how Poe feels about it all. Maybe it was just chaos. Was that a thing? Was that something you could touch?

At other times, nebulae emerge from stars. These ones form when material sheds after stellar evolutions, and stars form within them. Something like that. But in Poe’s mind the other kind never seem to produce anything very concrete. Anything as tangible as a star, if you can touch a star. Can you?

The first ones exist as giant clouds, cold – and dense with condensation – but beautiful. Much more beautiful than the second kind, maybe because you _definitely_ can’t touch them. They aren’t fixed. They’re just kind of vapor. Never, ever fixed and always changing.

Poe shakes his head. For some reason the Kaliida Nebula keeps tugging at the edges of his mind now.

 _But that’s crazy,_ he thinks. _Way too direct._

He’d been there before. To Kaliida. It was beautiful. He thought it was the cloud kind of nebula. He tries to put it out of his mind again for now as he sees what’s coming up fast in his rear viewports.

 _Shit,_ he thinks.

But even though Poe knows what he’s seeing is bad, the path over the Teth System still makes way more sense to him. Doesn’t it? They have to get further out beyond the range of any watchful First Order warships, and they are definitely less likely to meet them in Wild Space. Aren’t they?

But, again, Poe feels the same tug in his mind, and now he can even see the vermillion hues of it – so characteristic of the Kaliida Nebula – begin to colour the edges of his real-time vision.

 _Ah, fuck,_ he curses to himself, feeling confusion and starting to seriously doubt his decision now.

Teth had certainly seemed like a wise move to Poe at the time he’d planned this trip on the fly, and much wiser than Kaliida, which he knew was still parsecs and parsecs away. Poe pauses to reflect quickly on this: does he ever actually _not_ plan anything on the fly? As he monitors the autopilot program that BB-8’s configured he wonders more about this. Is he actually any good at _not_ responding to things with anything but emotion? Poe frowns. Maybe he isn’t. Maybe this – instinct – is actually his _element?_

 _It’s possible,_ Poe admits.

Because it’s Rey who’s the pragmatic one, and also who’s now charged him with this; stalling the Resistance fleet on their path to Takodana in order to come to the aid of her and Kylo Ren, on who the First Order seems to be rapidly closing in.

So, just who _is_ leading here now, anyway? Poe doesn’t mind that Rey’s made this new plan on her own. Actually, it’s kind of a relief. He wants to lead the Resistance, sure, but does he want the whole buck to stop with him? Maybe he doesn’t. Would he have done what Holdo had? That’s the sort of stuff you do when the whole buck stops with you. Holdo had made the ultimate sacrifice. Would Poe have done the same? Would _Rey?_

Poe shakes his head.

 _“Concentrate,”_ he murmurs, as he tries to rationalize it to himself again and shake the vision once and for all of Kaliida.

He looks again at what he sees approaching in the viewports behind him and goes through it in his mind once more. From his days in the Bright Jewel System, Poe knows the small planet of Teth has been relatively overlooked by both sides of the major wars that have occupied the key players in recent decades. His run here today _should_ be clear. Poe _should_ be able to cruise right over this whole damn star system. _Should_ be able to cut a nice safe passage straight east to the Outer Rim and then leisurely lead his small fleet round the arc of the border to the Mid Rim on their west. It _should_ be a piece of Sic-Six-layer cake. _Should_ be.

“What the fuck is _that?”_ Finn utters, as Poe hears the X-wing’s comm stream crackle back to life with his voice, and then Chewie’s characteristic growl, returning Poe’s attention to what he’d already seen but which the nebula vision kept distracting him from: TIE fighters.

“I can’t see where they’re coming from, but they sure are coming in fast,” Finn adds, through the comm.

“Yeah, buddy, I know. I can only see three, though,” Poe assesses, trying to keep the tone of his voice level, even though the doubts in his head are growing. He certainly isn’t feeling level. Instinct is taking over again.

“That’s one each, so if there’s only three we can do this and then push through. Confirm?”

“Got it.”

Chewie grumbles again and Poe watches the Falcon peel left as the Silencer goes right and Poe stays where he is, trying to fight the vision in order to concentrate. He is determined to maintain the current course over Teth. Nothing is going to change that. This Force thing can wait. Fuck the vision. Their lives are more important.

But something odd happens then. Poe can see one fighter close in on his tail but he can also see a path he isn’t taking. He has no idea how but somehow what his head tells him – to eye the fighter – no longer matters, and what does matter lies ahead in a clear vision of the Kaliida Nebula, virtually solidifying now in front of him. Poe can feel his mother’s ring, nestled below his clothing, and then something else. _Someone_ else. And he nearly has a heart attack as in a blind panic he automatically removes both hands from the console to reach instinctively for his blaster.

4\. Present. Takodana / Wild Space

_You want to die, do you?_

Ben watches Dameron pull back the safety before swiftly transferring a blistering heat to it through the Force so that the moron can no longer grip it, and the weapon clatters to the floor of the X-wing.

_What is it with you Rebels and blasters?_

“What the fuck are you doing?” Poe yells. “Where the hell is Rey?”

Ben ignores the background sounds of the traitor and the Wookiee as he hears them respond to Dameron’s outburst through the X-wing’s crackling comm.

_She’s asleep. Fucking put your hands back on the console now or I’ll do it for you._

“Show her to me,” Poe snarls.

_No. Do it, or you’ll be dead before you have your next stupid thought._

Poe hears the first of several blasts from the TIE fighter tailing him and slams his right palm against the aileron stick to careen the X-wing in an upward arc away from its range.

_You ready to listen to me now?_

“Fuck you.”

_What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m trying to fucking help you._

Ben hears the vague voices of Rebels again through the X-wing’s comm but continues to block them. If Dameron wastes any more time being as stubborn as Rey, Ben knows he’ll take a hit. He can sense it. Fed up, through the Force Ben takes control of the X-wing and overrides the auto-pilot to turn the starship around while doing the same to both the Silencer and the Falcon. Then he jams the controls on all three ships and deactivates the droid.

 _Well for fuck’s sake blast them out of the system_ , Ben thinks, as through the Force he reactivates manual pilot and gunner position on the Falcon. _That’s what you’re meant to be good at, isn’t it?_

Ben watches the Wookiee act first as he begins to carry out avoidance maneuvers and then listens to him grunt at the Rebel woman gunning, who promptly begins to fire and takes out the fighter tailing Dameron. Ben thanks the Maker that she’s a good shot as he also begins to feel something in response for the Wookiee. Nostalgia? Gratitude, even? Ben thinks of his father again and then suddenly he feels a pull that almost makes him lose the connection he’s opened through the Force between himself on Takodana and the Rebels, who are now fast approaching the lip of the Mid Rim.

 _You need to support them,_ Ben thinks, as he pictures the Wookiee and at the same time realizes that it’s not his stomach but higher up from where he can feel the pull.

Ben swallows thickly. He watches the Falcon drop back behind the starships as the gunner woman recommences fire. He’s grateful that his interference with the controls on both the Silencer and X-wing have meant there is now no communication transmitting from either Dameron or the traitor. He can hear their rage and confusion at him clearly enough through the Force. He doesn’t have the presence of mind now to explain anything further to them. He doesn’t have the patience either. Rey could probably do it. She was better at talking than him. Plus, they actually _liked_ her.

Sensing the Rebels are out of immediate danger – knowing the gunner is good enough to eliminate the remaining two TIE fighters and that the Wookiee is wise enough to follow the course Ben has set for at least the next few minutes – Ben turns his focus back to Rey. She still sleeps in his arms, where she’d drifted off earlier before Ben had sensed that the Rebels were in danger.

She is beautiful. He has thought it so many times and he knows it is one of the rare things in him that will never change. His love for her is a constant. The galaxy is full of unexplainably malleable elements. Cycles that shift. Orbits that slowly alter until at last they dramatically differ from what had once been seemingly permanent. But the way Ben feels for Rey will always be.

“Yes,” she breathes.

“What?”

She opens her eyes and lifts her chin to meet his gaze. Ben watches her lift her hand to stroke her thumb across his lower lip in a gesture he’s growing to know so well.

“Yes,” she repeats. “Now help me finish it.”

Rey lifts her face further, within reach of his, and she kisses his mouth tenderly before wriggling against him and at last sitting up within reach of her nascent saberstaff. She reaches across the earthen floor of the den for the toolbox and rummages through it roughly before extracting a soldering laser, a stick of solder, and a gnarly canister of flux.

Ben blinks. Had she just fucking said yes? Slowly, as he smells the flux and then hears the laser softly thrum, he sits up.

She rests on her knees, leaning forward. She wears no visor or gloves and he can tell she knows what she’s doing and has no call for safety. She doesn’t need it. She senses what needs doing now. As the last drips of solder gild the flux, she extinguishes the laser as what was once liquid quickly hardens and Rey downs the tools.

She inhales deeply. Here it is, at last. And she can’t help but beam at it. It is a beautiful thing and she can’t help but ravish it with her gaze. A thing that she and Ben have made together. That Ben had first suggested, and that she had thought about so carefully and decided that she wanted to create, too: her own Jedi weapon. But not just any; something special, meaningful and symbolic.

And he’d taken her to Ilum. He’d shown her how to collect the crystals. And she’d thought so carefully about which one she would choose. The only one she’d ever really known she'd not only wanted but _needed._ The only one that represented who she was. The warrior she was. The _activist_ she was. And the leader she was now determined to be.

Rey stands, bends, and grips the still warm hilt of it by its center.

 _This_ was meant to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am soooo looking forward to seeing Solo! In anticipation of this, Han features in this chapter. It’s a bit existential I guess. I needed to go there because in my own life I’ve gone there so I think our heroes should, too. It helps. Sort of. :/ Hope it doesn’t trigger anyone. Tried to include some buoyant stuff too to balance it out a bit. Interested to hear any thoughts and thank you to everyone who's left kudos on this work and commented xx


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